Hilary Swank's PR Team Dumps Her
Well, I guess turnabout is fair play. After Hilary Swank much of last week and this firing everyone from her manager to her agent, Hilary's PR team decided they were going to drop Hilary as a client. According to Entertainment Weekly, the two had a very strong disagreement about how to best handle the fallout after the event. Hilary went with the blame everyone but myself strategy while the PR company wanted her to do more of a mea culpa. That usually works best. Fall on your sword and be done with it. All Hilary has done is drag this thing out way longer than it should have. Look at all the other celebrities that were there. They said what they said and moved on. Hilary though, is just not getting it. She keeps saying if she had known everything in advance she would not have gone. Don't you think that over the past ten years or so that maybe Chechnya has popped into her conscious. Maybe a little Google on that 12 hour flight?
Never like this one. After two Oscars she comes off as being a bit entitled about everthing, IMO.
ReplyDeleteWell, Hilary is a woman who basically took a dump all over her ex-husband but telling all about his drug addiction issues (and not taking some responsibility for the end of her marriage). So her inability to offer a mea culpa on the Chechnya debacle is not exactly surprising. Good for the P.R. firm for offering smart advice and dumping a headache for a client. There are more potential clients walking around La Cienaga and Rodeo for them to get.
ReplyDeleteShe's been going downhill since she hooked up with her manager...stupid girl.
ReplyDelete@Sevenmack -- Ugh. I had TOTALLY forgotten about that Vanity Fair article. She did, indeed, take a big steaming crap on Chad Lowe. This woman just does NOT come across as a likable person in any way whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteIn 2004, I stayed at a resort in Yelapa, Mexico (Hotel Langunita). Hilary Swank happened to be there too with Chad Lowe. They were both extremely nice and down to earth - normal, basically. They weren't flashy or snooty. If you Google this resort, you will see it's for the budget-minded (me). So, here we (the guests) all were staying in palapas, with mosquito nets over our beds, hermit crabs all over the place (they were in the banana leaves that constructed the roofs!), bathrooms that were practically outside and right there with us were a couple of famous people. If you get a chance to visit this resort, I HIGHLY recommend it. The food was amazing!!!
ReplyDeleteI see it both ways. On one hand, Hilary should just fall on her sword, if only to squash this story and get it out of the press.
ReplyDeleteThen again, if I was paying someone to keep up with things for me, I'd expect them to keep me out of messes like this. Should she have been more aware? Yes. And you can debate that having a new manager hasn't helped in this matter. But it amazes me that no one on her team thought to stop her from going.
I can see your point, Layna. But I also say that as the chief executive of her own business and career, Hilary is the one ultimately responsible for image management and control. If she can't do something as simple as look up Chechnya and read Wikipedia about the longstanding genocide in that country, then she deserves what she gets.
ReplyDeleteAs a former actor-turned-president would say, trust your people, but verify that they got it right. If Eddie Van Halen can check to make sure that a concert promoter serves M&Ms with the brown ones out, than Hilary can check on her managers and make sure they don't get her into fixes like this. After all, it is her career.
It's why I see both sides. Hilary ultimately is the person in charge of her career.
ReplyDeleteBut if the person who's getting 5-10% of my annual salary can't fact-check for me, I can fire them and buy a good laptop with WiFi. It's cheaper and in this case, more reliable.
I imagine most stars probably don't think to double-check behind their agents and managers. Most assume that if they're paying that much for their services, they'll get things right. That's not the case, however.
And this is true, Layna. I wish more stars realized this. If they just followed the Oprah route, started their own production and management firms, paid straight salary to staff, and kept that five-to-ten in their pockets, they'd be wealthier and more-secure financially. Or, at the very least, have more money to pour into those Panerei watches.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Sevenmack. No matter who schedules this event or suggests that she goes, THEY work for HER. Not the other way around. They had to ask her if she wanted to go first, they don't just schedule stuff without her knowledge and green light. Her team is stupid for asking if she'd like to attend without knowing a thing about Chechnya (or maybe they did), but besides the fact that it's ultimately her responsibilty, all she's doing by blaming everyone but herself is telling the whole world "I DON'T READ A NEWSPAPER." I'd be more embarrassed about that, just admit it was a mistake to go and move on.
ReplyDeleteThe Benjamins made her do it $$$
ReplyDeleteThey may work for her but they still get to pick their clients. Lilo's PR team works a hell of a lot harder for their 5% than Hugh Jackman's.
ReplyDeletePersonal Responsibility. Even 2 Time Academy Award Winning Hollywood Stars need some.
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing: She's won all her Oscars on movies that make extreme political statements to make. That's why this is sticking to her (and not her staff, and not to other entertainers there). Like it or not, fair or not, in Hollywood she embodies a certain political statement (and has taken all the credit for it in the past). Here's another huge political statement and boy is it the wrong one in Hollywood -- and by God she won't take any responsiblity for it.
ReplyDeleteIt's a career killer. Not with audiences but with political Hollywood shakers. That's the real reason her P.R. firm has bailed at a stage when, really, this otherwise would have blown over. She's toast. They have more to lose by remaining associated with her than by sticking it out.
Its odd that Vanessa Mae, Seal, and Jean Claude Van Damme were also there, but it only seems to be sticking to Hilary. Enty is right, make one statement, make a donation, move on. Why did she handle it so poorly and drag it out. What an idiot.
ReplyDeleteIt may be as simple as the PR people representing other clients of the management group. When HS fired the management group the PR people saw the writing on the wall and took the exit.
ReplyDeleteAll she had to do was wait it out till Lohan went to court or some other Hollywood thing happened and everyone would have forgotten.
ReplyDeleteI thought HS supported Amnesty International??
ReplyDeleteThey tend to speak out about whom is abusing Human Rights.
She needed to just stand up and say "Mea Culpa". It boils down to being her own fault.
The most damning thing is that Hilary herself said during her "performance" that she knew who he was and had "done her research."
ReplyDeleteLayna, her manager couldn't keep her out of it, because he was told she wasn't going.
I'm done with her, and with Seal too.
Maybe she missed Bridget Jones' Diary.
ReplyDelete@Mooshki - Yep, she shot herself in the foot with that statement.
ReplyDelete