To be quite clear, I’m not someone who instinctively hates the paparazzi; I have those camera-toting pervs to thank for many of the unguarded, un-posed celebrity images I hold nearest and dearest to my heart, such as the “Bimbo Summit” photo of Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and pretty much every snapshot of the Olsen twins from their NYU years. (Remember their paparazzi sketch on Saturday Night Live? No? Because it aired in 2004? And I’m the only one who compulsively watches old SNL episodes as a kind of soothing white noise while I work? Okay!)
With that said, I have to draw a long-overdue line in the sand when it comes to their constant and unremitting spoiling of scenes from unreleased film and television projects—whether it’s Josh Safdie’s Timothée Chalamet-fronted Marty Supreme, Emerald Fennell’s already controversial Wuthering Heights, or the Devil Wears Prada sequel. I mean, remember Carrie Bradshaw’s big, floppy gingham hat from the current season of And Just Like That? That was something I should have learned about the old-fashioned way–on TV—not on Getty Images a year beforehand!
Obviously, paparazzi taking pictures of TV and movie stars while they film is nothing new (especially when they’re doing it in New York City, in broad daylight), but thanks to the ubiquity of Instagram, X, and every other social media app slowly sapping years off of my lifespan, it feels like there’s been a shift in just how widely those pictures are disseminated—and how quickly they’re absorbed by the Discourse, for better or for worse.
Like, I’m as excited as you would imagine any Vogue employee to be about The Devil Wears Prada 2, but I’m not going to lie: already knowing what Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs wears in the movie is kind of letting the wind out of my sails. I want to imagine Andy’s grown-up, post-Runway world for as long as I can until the movie’s actually in cinemas, okay? Ditto for Ryan Murphy’s upcoming Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy series, actually. Yes, I’m devouring every paparazzi photo of a blonded-up Sarah Pidgeon like candy, but I’m feeling just as mildly nauseous and overstimulated in the aftermath as I do when I polish off an entire bag of gummy peach rings and call it “lunch”.
One could argue that if I really wanted to discourage the spread of these spoilery pap shots, I could simply stop trawling Getty Images and SplashNews and republishing them—but come on. We in fashion and entertainment media rely on the shadowy paparazzo economy to do our jobs. What I do think would be nice, however, is if paps respected the bounds of intellectual property just a little bit more, and stuck mostly to haunting the Meatpacking District, looking for drunk, overexposed celebutantes doing embarrassing stuff on their way out of clubs, as per tradition. Just let me look forward to something on this cruel mortal coil, for God’s sake!
This story was originally published on British Vogue.
