So about my theory
I have been thinking a bit about what really supports that these two are PR. A few things prior to the baby announcement really gave me pause when looking at that timeline; but first I am going to start from the beginning. The strongest part of the theory is the relationship has, if not always been, used as PR infrastructure, and the timing/framing around it is weirdly convenient.
First, Sebastian’s visibility did not disappear when he stopped using social media, he merely shifted mediums. His public image is “private actor who does not court attention,” but after his last Instagram activity around his 40th birthday in 2022, his craving for attention didn't stop. As we can see, he simply changed it into pap walks, vacation photos, tabloid items, red carpets, and couple sightings with Annabelle.
Their public timeline already looked like a soft launch. Annabelle’s split from Chris Pine was confirmed in March 2022, and by May 2022 she and Sebastian were being linked after a Robert Pattinson birthday party photo. However, we already know that they were seen in February 2022 by someone before the split from Pine. By summer 2022, they were being photographed together in Greece. That is a fast transition from prior relationship to new public couple narrative.
Then there is the most obvious career/proximity angle for Botoxbelle. Her biggest mainstream attempt was The Mummy, where even then she was heavily marketed as "Chris Martin's girlfriend' which clearly didn't turn her into a major star, and was a huge flop. Since then, a lot of her visibility and jobs have come through proximity to more famous men. She voiced Zora in Star Trek: Discovery and Short Treks, while she was publicly linked to Chris Pine, who had connections with Paramount due to his prior Star Trek roles.
Now, while being connected to Sebastian, she is in Mercy with Chris Pratt, was supposed to be in Twisted Metal, a project with Anthony Mackie, and was JUST announced in Oh, How Fun!, a film from Argyris Papadimitropoulos, the same director Sebastian worked with on Monday. Again, none of this proves that him or prior boyfriends got her any jobs, but the pattern of borrowed proximity and networking is incredibly obvious.
Now, the most interesting part that I just realized recently is that Sebastian’s longtime manager, Emily Gerson Saines, runs Brookside Artist Management. Deadline reported in February that Untitled Entertainment was in talks to acquire Brookside. Who is Untitled, you ask? Well it is also Annabelle’s management firm. So there is that very convenient professional link between Sebastian’s side and Annabelle’s side. I also need to drive home the point that Sebastian is her most famous client. She makes most of her money off of him. She attends nearly everything that he does professionally, which is incredibly odd. She has also managed him for what amounts to his entire career, which is also nearly unheard of. She also ingratiates herself into the lives of her clients, because she also manages Kieran and Macaulay Culkin, and they has publicly stated how involved she is in their personal lives, and is treated like a member of the family. Sebastian has also expressed this same sentiment. It likely explains why he hasn't fired her and gotten someone better like any other actor would've at this point.
Which makes it even more strange is that barely 10 days after the announcement that his manager was selling her firm, after not being seen together for months, they are suddenly seen together on Valentine’s Day with that now infamous pap walk, which was an obvious attempt to once again signal them as a couple. THEN little over a month later we get that TMZ report that Annabelle is pregnant. The wording of the announcement made it clear that they were spoon fed this information. Almost exactly a month after that, we get her doing her 400 pap walks around NYC that no one picked up until photos came out where he was walking with her. Suddenly, everyone treats the news as confirmed and she is then branded as 'pregnant Annabelle Wallis.' Consider that all this time we also see them heavily gearing up the Fjord promo. Then we get that Deadline interview where again he confirms nothing, but the entire interview was a bunch of abstractions about fatherhood and upbringing, ALL IN RELATION TO HIS MOVIE.
Then Cannes happens, and the coverage becomes 'pregnant Annabelle Wallis with Sebastian Stan,' not Botoxbelle as an actress with her own independent news value. Every tabloid reports the Cannes appearance as her debuting her baby bump alongside Sebastian while he was there promoting Fjord.
This is where the Fjord campaign becomes important and the purpose obvious. Sebastian is promoting a serious Cannes film where he plays a father in a Romanian family drama. Every single article framed Fjord around him reconnecting with his Romanian past, and Deadline’s Cannes interview framed his fatherhood comments through the film, including 'I want to be a good dad.' NOTHING was ever a solid confirmation that he was having a baby, and the topic clearly made him visibly uncomfortable and something he quickly moves on from.
What is interesting to note, is that all this mirrors what he did with The Apprentice. He didn't simply try to sell the role as a performance. but he sold it through his favorite topic, his checklist personal biography: Romania, communism, dictatorship, immigrant identity, and 'there is a Trump in all of us.' Vanity Fair also played heavily into his Romanian childhood and family history in its 2025 profile that came out after he lost the Oscar.
Now with Fjord, the personal biography hook is fatherhood. The public narrative for him now becomes: actor plays a father in a serious Romanian auteur drama while becoming a father in real life. He has his awards campaign already set for the rest of the year. (I should also add that it is highly likely that he is done with Marvel after Doomsday, given that he sought out a role in a rival studio with DC. Marvel has been notoriously possessive of actors in active contract with them, so take that under consideration with his sudden need to pivot his career so hard)
What I found that makes it stranger and more obvious that their entire relationship is a PR arrangement, is that neither of them seems to personally own the baby narrative directly. She has never posted him or directly referred to him on her social media. She hasn't even clearly made her own pregnancy announcement. She appears visibly pregnant in public, and lets the press do the announcing. He continues to filter everything through Fjord, as if that's the only thing that matters.
So the pattern is:
They do not directly confirm much themselves.
They let tabloids, pap photos, red carpets, and interview framing do the work.
She gets relevance as 'Sebastian Stan’s pregnant girlfriend.'
He gets fatherhood/serious actor optics while maintaining the image that he is private and not trying to get attention.
That is why this reads PR-coded to me. Not because every private part of the relationship must be fake, but because this relationship has served a PR purpose from day one. He planned to leave social media, and instead started using the PR happy Annabelle do all the work for him. He can pretend he isn't trying to be seen while actively participating in staged pap walks with his age-appropriate girlfriend who would never outshine him professionally and is happy to be the plus 1 and get access to more famous people in return.
It should also be noted that Botoxbelle DOESN'T HAVE A PUBLICIST. She has no image to manage, she is so irrelevant no one cares. This just makes it easier for Sebastian and his people to handle the optics, meaning that he is actively participating in this as much as she. He is benefiting, make no doubt about it. Now whether the sale of his managers talent firm is also playing a part in this, that remains to be seen, but I find it very convenient that this kicked off right after that announcement was made that their management firms would be merging.
None of this is accidental.
