There were no more premieres or red carpets, no parties or late night chat shows. With movie releases, festivals, tours and filming all cancelled, there was nothing to promote. Instead of A-listers, we suddenly found magazines covered by National Health Service heroes and David Hockney paintings, while at one point in April, the most famous man in the UK was Captain Tom Moore, a war veteran who raised over £30m for the NHS by walking lengths of his garden.
Normally anonymous health advisors shot to fame: in New Zealand, a devoted fandom developed around the country’s director-general of health and public face of tackling the crisis, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, and a viral TikTok video featured a Hamilton parody ode to Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
When celebrities stay at home, the gossip-mill begins to stutter. Without the usual showbiz schedule, paparazzi pin their hopes on seeing famous people popping to the supermarket to buy loo roll and pasta, invariably with their face mostly obscured by a mask. Instead of glamorous pictures of A-listers dining at Craig’s or The Ivy, we are left with endless shots of Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas going for their daily walk.
So what to do, as a celebrity whose very existence depends on being seen by other people, when we are all stuck at home?
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