Inside the murky world of crisis PR

Scandal in showbiz is nothing new, but stars are increasingly turning to a set of publicists to help protect their reputations

In the debauched world of entertainment, crisis is a cottage industry and business right now is booming. Take rapper Sean Combs, better known as Diddy. The musician was hauled before a grand jury in Manhattan last month, charged with a two-decade campaign of violence, coercion and sexual abuse. More than 120 women have now come forward with accusations, which he denies, in a scandal that has spiralled since footage from 2016 of him dragging and kicking former girlfriend Cassie Ventura leaked online in May. 
But while showbiz stars have been frantically scrambling to distance themselves from the rapper – Leonardo DiCaprio, Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber are amongst previous attendees of Combs’s parties to have denied knowledge of his alleged impropriety – an influential sect of showbiz specialists have been quietly moving closer, readying themselves for action and a potentially lucrative payday.
Crisis publicists are damage limitation experts who clean up after huge scandals, helping embattled clients rebuild their reputations. Tens of millions of dollars are estimated to have been spent in 2024 already on them, following all manner of outcries, often over more minor allegations than those levelled at Diddy. Last month, it emerged that It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni had hired one such specialist, Melissa Nathan, after rumours exploded on TikTok of a falling out with the film’s star and producer, Blake Lively. 
Online influencers have been getting in on the act, too: YouTube sensation MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) is reported to have enlisted the help of notorious Hollywood crisis comms expert Matthew Hiltzik, whose clients have included Johnny Depp and Alec Baldwin, after allegations began to circulate earlier this year of mistreated contestants on a new game show he’s hosting. (Donaldson responded that filming “was unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues,” and that the show was undergoing a formal review). 
It’s not just celebrities. Entertainment companies themselves are employing in-house crisis publicists, ready to handle any scandals that come their way. Last year, a job at Disney was advertised online, with an annual salary that could feasibly buy you a Cinderella castle. The role? A specialist who can “lead crisis communications response efforts,” as Disney put it. The pay packet? $337,920 a year. 
“What you’ve got to remember is the context,” a source connected to the company tells The Telegraph. It was October; a few months earlier, chief executive Bob Iger had given an interview to CNBC widely derided as an absolute disaster. Hollywood was on strike at the time and, amid that stand-off between studios and Tinseltown creatives, fighting for better pay and protections from the slow-creep of artificial intelligence threatening their livelihoods, Iger – who commands an annual salary of $32 million a year – called the union action “very disturbing… There’s a level of expectation they have that’s just not realistic.” 
“The optics were immediately: What does this guy know about realistic?” the source – speaking to The Telegraph on condition of anonymity – explains about the online reaction that followed. “Throw into the mix [Marvel’s] whole Kang disaster,” they continue – a reference to disgraced Marvel actor Jonathan Majors, whose arrest and subsequent conviction for domestic assault in March 2023 threw the Disney-owned superhero studio’s plans into disarray – “and it makes sense that Disney would act. Why wouldn’t they look to hire someone to sweep up messes as and when they emerge? Especially with them emerging more and more often, faster and angrier than ever in a time of social media.”
Scandal has, of course, always existed in Hollywood, and “fixers” – appointed to manage and contain the fallout of those scandals – have always existed to provide some control when word threatens to get out. In 2024, however – an age of fast and furious online judgement, in which stars are only ever a misjudged tweet away from a career-threatening backlash – crisis publicists are becoming a more and more integrated cog in the entertainment industry infrastructure (one 2018 report in Rolling Stone described a 300 per cent up-tick in harassment claims in the aftermath of #MeToo, leading to a surge in specialists charging up to $800 an hour). 
But crisis PRs operate largely away from the spotlight, leaving the term nebulous and unknowable to those outside the industry. What do crisis PRs actually do? How exactly do they tame social media storms and influence the narrative around embattled stars? And when representing people who’ve committed sometimes terrible misdeeds, what moral questions do they ask themselves? 
“We always analyse it on a case-by-case basis. In the past, and no doubt again in the future, we’ve made decisions not to work with certain potential clients,” explains Neil McLeod, Director of Strategic Communications at publicity firm PHA Group, whose previous clients include Cliff Richard and Julian Assange. 
When many think of crisis PR, they imagine shadowy string-pullers, responsible for absolving misbehaving celebrities. Their blueprint for absolving said celebrity usually involves an apology (see Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl’s recent social media acknowledgement that he’d fathered a child with a woman that isn’t his wife), a moment of vulnerability with sympathetic media (see Kevin Spacey, who broke down in tears in conversation with Piers Morgan following accusations of sexual misconduct which he denied) and increasingly an appearance on reality TV: Philip Schofield and Matt Hancock have attempted to rebuild their reputations after scandals by appesurvival shows Cast Away and I’m A Celebrity respectively. It is not known whether these celebrities, however, have formally employed crisis publicists. 
Cliff Richard enlisted the PHA Group’s help after his home was raided in 2014 as part of an investigation the BBC reported was connected to sexual abuse allegations (Richard was never arrested or charged and the police dropped the investigation, and the BBC was forced to pay a settlement for breaching his privacy). To McLeod, who’s proud of his company’s role, there’s a “level of scrutiny in the entertainment world today more intense than ever” that’s led to a “sizeable need” for crisis PRs – many of whom, like him, come from journalism backgrounds, and know first-hand how news stories can spiral. Behind the boom in demand for crisis management, he says, are three factors: changing technologies, changing audiences and changing economics.
“Back in the day, it was just newspapers. Now with everything online, a story can spread very quickly. It can often be untrue – just an unchallenged theory that hasn’t gone through the rigorous checks a newspaper will make. The impact is instantaneous and it can last forever,” says McLeod. “It used to be that you had what we’d call “the golden hour” to respond to a crisis. Now it’s a golden minute.” 
Regularly, in this golden window, crisis PRs will bargain with publications. One publicist to some of Britain’s best-known pop artists tells the Telegraph: “Often what you’re seeing when you see a damaging story in the papers is actually the diluted version. A PR will guarantee an exclusive interview with the talent, in return for them running a softer version of the story. That’s been a commonplace thing for quite a while.” They go on to explain how, a while ago, a major name was photographed drunk in a scandal that generated major headlines. More damning photographs existed of the star in question taking drugs from the same night, but a deal was struck that suited both the high-profile figure in question and the publication.  
It’s not just journalism that’s evolved, leading to the surge in crisis PR. Audiences today are much quicker to judge the stars we pedestal as a culture. Another crisis PR, who again asked to not be named to protect their relationships in the industry, described a current cultural climate in which pop culture consumers are more conscious of who they support and what films and concerts they pay for, based on the politics and perceived morality of that pop star. “It’s great that people don’t want to platform stars any more who do terrible things. 
But sometimes the spotlight on them and the demand for perfection is borderline puritanical and anti-nuance. Just look at the Chappell Roan situation” (the pop star was falsely labelled a Trump supporter by fans who threatened to stop supporting her, for appearing to criticise Joe Biden and Kamala Harris). McLeod concurs: “It’s not just who you are and what your behaviour has been that matters. [You can be judged by] people you’ve associated with in the past, unknowingly. That can drag you into situations where all of a sudden you need a crisis strategy.”
reminder to boycott the upcoming disney live action of snow white https://t.co/6RdkHfM8jY pic.twitter.com/r4qewBpOYC
The upcoming Snow White movie at Disney is an interesting example of this audience change in action. The film stars West Side Story star Rachel Zegler – an actress who has spoken out against the bombing of innocent civilians in Palestine – and Gal Gadot, who posted on Instagram ‘I stand with Israel’, and who was once a part of the Israel Defense Forces. Filmgoers on both sides of the debate on Gaza are threatening to boycott the movie because of the actress whose views they disagree with. 
Disney cannot afford Snow White to be a commercial misfire; another flop following the underwhelming performances of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Marvels and Wish could cause their stock price to waver. In that context – bearing in mind the millions that stand to be won or lost by the the House of Mouse’s ability to get control of the public narrative around Gadot and Zegler’s views on Gaza – the $337,920 a year they’re willing to spend on a crisis PR represents good business. 
Can any amount of crisis PR deal with a scandal as deep as Diddy’s? It’s hard to say. Aside from a statement from his attorney strenuously denying all wrong-doing, the rapper is yet to speak out on the accusations – or sign with one of the several crisis PR firms said to be vying for his business. Industry experts, however, have suggested we may begin to see that change, should he be released on bail before his court case. 
One thing is for certain, though – with what’s on the horizon with artificial intelligence, McLeod is anticipating an even bigger role for crisis PR moving forward. “Deep fakes are going to pose a really big problem,” he says. “A video made as satire or as comedy of an actor could be mistaken for real, with serious ramifications for their reputation and an immediate response needed.” Crisis in showbiz is going nowhere, then. And neither, it seems, are its secret firefighters.
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