https://www.tiktok.com/@thekylemarisa/video/7300672863118429483?_t=8hJdoeX7KGY&_r=1

Thoughts?

Wait, is the anon not only saying what we’ve been saying all along but also that Olivia Wilde negotiated a tattoo in exchange for not getting a fake marriage proposal? Why did they have to out Louis and Harry at the end? 🥲

I don’t know what to think, but it makes me hate the music industry so much more.

Also how is Tumblr allowing an 8min video upload?! 👀

Here guys come and grab one

Oh my! Gina, have you seen this?

https://x.com/aestheticarry/status/1781342144856285237?s=46&t=KM1Y22XQBNGo6oNfvMQrQQ

This is seriously COPY. OF. A. COPY. 💀

I did! In a way, it’s very comforting to have it just be the same shit over and over. I’d much rather know what to expect.

But JFC it’s so embarrassing.

Both sharing his bag

Both getting papped right near Erskine

Both sharing a stunt hat

Both getting a Vogue cover

See the rest of the comparisons here: x

begging an abusive man to stay in your film and calling his actions a “wake up call” for the lead actress is horrible enough, but to then turn around and pretend you fired him, and use that lie to promote the idea of you as a feminist, goes beyond performative into plain despicable. what a slap in the face not only to florence, but to fka twigs and every woman dhia has abused in his personal life too.

what are your thoughts about Harry's new tattoo?

Hi darling.

I am not going to lie: I’ve been upset about it for three days now, swinging back and forth between being super angry and trying to be okay with it. I thought about not answering this, because I don’t want to open this Pandora’s box, but I decided to in the hopes that I can help someone else. I won’t be answering follow up questions/reactions, though. That’s my boundary.

Now, I think the important thing is to call this out for what it is and stop making excuses: it’s an Olivia tattoo, and whether it’s for a stunt, a cat, a house, the One Direction song, an unknown godchild, it doesn’t matter. He has it, he showed it off (rather purposefully), he knew what we would think and the kind of debate/restlessness it would spark.

Can I forgive him for that, point blank, without further reasoning or rationalizing? I’ve decided I can.

Why? Because I don’t think it negates all he’s given me these past thirteen years and especially this last leg of tour, and because I don’t think what he does for PR and/or to protect his closet is a statement about who he is as a human being. No one has to agree with me. It’s a decision I’ve made for myself and I’m happy with it. If this is your red line (and I fully encourage you to ask yourself this regularly) then that’s fine. Grieve the person you thought he was and take steps to distance yourself from what hurts you. I don’t mean to minimize this: walking away is hard as shit. But he will be okay, I promise. The person who needs to be okay the most is you.

Do I think they really dated/that he was in love with her? No.

Why? Because he looked miserable every time he was around her, because he took very clear steps to ensure she wasn’t tied to his music (which I’ve noticed he holds pretty sacred above all), and because at the end of the day he still broke up with her two days after his very public last contractual obligation was filled and kissed her friend extremely publicly.

Can you find ways to argue around that? Of course you can. You can find ways to argue around anything. But for me, that’s not how you treat someone you’re in love with even if they’ve pissed you off beyond belief and messed with your career. Nothing Harry has done outside of this stunt shows me he would treat people he cares about that way, even in his worst moments. It’s incongruous to everything I’ve seen and known of him and his character in the last thirteen years. I may not know him personally, and I may be wrong about him, but again, that’s my conclusion and I’m happy with it.

Do I think the tattoo means something’s in the works to rekindle the stunt? I truly don’t know.

But if it is, then it’s been planned for a long, long, long time (he had the tattoo during Daylight filming, which is May 2022; the BUA was Nov 2022), and there’s nothing I can do about it. It is what it is.

I’ve always preached being okay with not knowing, being okay with being uncomfortable, and this is certainly making me walk the talk.

The bottom line is: Am I okay with the things I have answers to? Yes.

Am I okay with the thing I don’t have answers to? I am working on it.

But that’s my responsibility, not Harry’s.

— FIN —

*thank you, Gina, for your contributions to clearing my head and for many of the phrases I used here to express myself.

am i the only one who doesn't see olivia 😬 i definitely don't see "via" in the end it's more like "na" to me especially considering it's cursive so in that case the tattoo says "olina" and it's a city in italy and that option makes much more sense lol

I appreciate the effort of everyone trying to be rational about this bullshit, but the thing for me is that I clearly see Olivia there, it could be Olives, it could be Olina, it could be Gemma’s dead cat Olivia… but like, c’mon. It’s the same as saying Louis’ E tattoo is for Edward and not Eleanor. The tattoo is there with an intention, he’s not stupid, he wouldn’t *accidentally* write something that looks like Olivia. I have no idea if he was supposed to show the tattoo earlier or whatever just happened there, but like I said before, I really don’t give a fuck because she’s gone. And it’s annoying because he knows how messy it is and how that would upset a lot of us, because OF COURSE he’s displaying his new(ish) tattoo wearing bluegreen and his Louie shirt, so like. It’s the same as always for me, both of them have been playing this game with us for a while now… and they’re going to keep doing it because it’s convenient for everyone.

I understand people are super upset over it, but I’m so done with all this stunt shit coming from all sides, so I just decided that I can’t give a fuck anymore, I’m enjoying the good parts they’re giving us and ignoring the rest otherwise I’d have to step back 🤷‍♀️

For everyone who thinks Harry (or any celeb) doesn’t need PR 🥴

link

Babes. A request before I go to sleep. Can you make a comparison pic. One when Harry claimed Louis's hand when they were standing in a group during their last x factor performance. And second when he was standing stiff when his hands on his sides so he wouldn't have to touch O's hand on anyone's back. Yes. These two. Thank you. Good night.

The whole Don't Worry Darling mess isn't funny just because of how much of a trainwreck it is on face value, but also because it somehow brought together several bizarre drama plots which had been going for months or sometimes even years. It's how for months already there were bad rumors about the work environment of this movie's production. It's how Harry fans had been going on for months how Holivia looked fake and had weird vibes, fuelled further by gay rumors that have followed him for years. It's how Chris Pine is somehow involved who is a very specific brand of celebrity - always light-hearted and funny for press, very just wants to read his books and not be involved in drama and the internet, and also with his own gay rumors following him for years. It's how in the confusion of the bullshit Harry/Chris has come up. It's how there is also somehow drama involving Shia Labeouf who years ago went through a very public massive wtf break down combined with several weird internet memes/art projects. It's how people are seeing how some fuel to the fire comes from instagram rumor account DeuxMoi which I saw gain traction a few weeks ago and spend a night reading up on in horrified fascination. It's not just that this movie premier may be the biggest dumpster fire of the century in really dump and preventable ways, but the bizarre incedulity of it all also comes from finding out it involves THAT person and THAT person and THAT person. It's almost as if they would make a real superwholock crossover episode you know?

Full article:

Full article before it gets deleted/edited. Link

Most awkward press conference in history.

- Gemma deserves so much better

- Chris was over the whole thing

- Olivia proves again she’s tone deaf with her “the 50’s were soooo great” bullshit. Yeah, if you were a rich straight white woman with a decent husband. Outside those lines and you were fucked. On behalf of my dear grandmother who was one of those who were fucked over, I will never look at Olivia with anything else but derision and disgust. Fuck you.

- Harry being asked only questions about music or the fans is a tad disrespectful because he’s there as an actor. But, when his team allows him to be reduced to tabloid fodder and his director tries to dick ride off him for 2 years, what did you expect

- The only winner was Florence who timed her Venice entrance impeccably as she arrived mid press conference like the unbothered queen she is.

Is this just my perception because of tumblr or do people actually care less about this stunt than any others before? like theres nothing to “chew on” for the gp either. they just do their thing and some harries get excited im sure but at what point does this become boring for them too?

I can only speak for myself, but yes, I’m hardly fazed by it all. Holivia has really bruised us in so many ways because they’ve gone off script so much.

Olivia herself was extremely attention hungry from the beginning. She would seek to be near Harry all the freaking time since her calendar was empty with no job in sight and split custody.

She would take her tired kids to the final show knowing very well People would drop the Holivia BUA less than 24 hours later.

Which took way too long in everyone’s opinion anyway, with all of her shit reflecting so badly on Harry. Hooking up with a subordinate, their shady stunt kickoff with Sudeikis hinting him and her weren’t done at the time, the embarrassing drama around Florence and Shia, the nasty custody battle that followed, the whack DWD promo interviews that revealed her twisted views on feminism, her arrogance towards Harry’s fans and calling us “mosquitoes”. Even Harry’s het fanbase bailed on her eventually, and they usually idolize any girl Harry lays his eyes on. I will never understand why Harry dragged her along for so long.

Olivia meant bad news in every way for Harry and in hindsight it looked like she needed Harry with his “good guy image” in her life to prove she’s not a terrible person.

With Hussell, Harry used familiar patterns from the beginning. The VIP tickets to the shows, the soho house roof top sun bathings, the strolls through London. We’re back to things being predictable. Taylor Russell has even received the same gold star package Olivia did, gets into Vogue, Harry Lambert takes care of her look and overall getting a huge push in the press for holding Harry’s hand. As long as TR doesn’t turn out to be another awful person in Harry’s life, we’ll be all but eye rolling from afar and yeah, possibly not care at all until the next BUA.

I wish I could enjoy HS4 without songs that reference TR. But apparently that's not going to happen, right? These public trips to the places he claims to love. This seems designed to link this album to her, as was HS2 to C

Well, I don’t care about the narrative they spin. I loved Fine Line and I’m pretty certain I’ll love HS4. I think it’s up to you whether you allow PR to ruin something for you. No one cared that Louis explicitly said Walls was “all about” Eleanor. Why care about this? To each their own, but if I didn’t let Olivia ruin Harry’s House for me, TR won’t either.

harries calling florence pugh unprofessional like olivia didn’t fuck her male lead on set 🥱🥱

I was hoping to get your opinion on this entire holivia situation. You seem very open and patient to anons and I enjoy reading your responses. Why do you think it is that Harry and his team seem to have less of a say or control when it comes to this particular stunt? I understand there is a hollywood movie involved but it still seems oddly excessive to me. In the past Harry has been able to put his foot down and even cut beards off when they've behaved a little OTT but not with this one. tbc.

Hi there!

Sorry this took a while, you guys always hit me with the interesting stuff when I have other things I really ought to be doing. Oops. 😅

So, I know that I maybe sound like a broken record with my disclaimers, but when we talk about topics like this, I think it’s really important to remind ourselves that all we’re capable of doing is inferring. We don’t actually have any concrete knowledge about what Harry and Olivia’s stunt contract stipulates, what the overarching goals of the stunt are, what their red lines are, how they negotiated things, how things have evolved and whether the contract is flexible, etc. and we’re not ever going to have access to that info. I say this because I think we as a fandom sometimes have the habit of talking about situations like we know things for certain, because we’re often looking to each other for guidance and to make sense of very complex professional and personal situations that, unfortunately, tend to weigh very heavily on us emotionally, and part of fandom “health” (at least for me) is getting comfortable with not knowing and never getting a definitive answer.

Another really important thing to note (that someone very smart pointed out in a tag on one of my posts, I wish I could tag you) is that personal and professional goals are very different. What someone wants to achieve professionally can be (and very often is) contradictory to what they may want for their personal life. Part of living in the real world is understanding that that tension and complexity is always going to exist, and it’s actually extremely rare for those two things to align, especially in a career where success is almost entirely dependent on public love and support. I don’t think that’s said often enough when we discuss closeting and Harry and Louis’ situations.

All that said, let’s get into your question. (This is going to get long, so I apologize.)

Firstly, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a situation where Harry/his team have ever “put their foot down” when it comes to a stunt, but more importantly, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a stunt be “over the top” like this. So, when you say Olivia’s team says “jump” and Harry’s team says “how high?” I think that’s a bit of a misreading of the situation.

My guess is what you’re actually seeing is Olivia using the loopholes in their contract to her utmost advantage, which no other stunt has either thought to do, or had enough leverage to do in the past. We have to remember that these negotiations likely happened at the beginning of DWD, and at that time, Olivia was in a different professional situation than she is in now. She was his director, she was casting him, she was his professional superior, and negotiating something like a PR stunt with your professional superior is a delicate thing because, no matter how popular or accomplished Harry is or how much Olivia may have wanted his fan base for the movie, the power dynamics are still very much present. Compounded with the fact that Olivia herself was who they were pitching as his stunt partner, it would have been very easy to write something in the contract that she could take as a personal insult and that could’ve very easily jeopardized his role in the movie, their working relationship, his reputation as an up and coming actor… the list goes on.

That particular complexity has never existed with any of Harry’s other stunts (even the more high profile ones like Taylor and Kendall) because he’s never been directly beholden to them in a professional capacity. The worst thing that could’ve happened to him if he’d insulted those stunt partners somehow is calling the deal off and a few scathing rumors and songs here or there. With Taylor and Kendall, Harry was always an equal, not a subordinate. With the others, they had a vested interest in staying in Harry’s good graces by not pushing the boundaries, because he was a lot more famous than most of them. Olivia, however, seems not to care about pushing that boundary, mostly, I think, due to her personality, her “alpha-female” approach to her career goals, and the fact that Harry is likely to continue to conduct himself as professionally as he can even in a trying situation, so the backlash she gets from him, personally, is probably not enough to dissuade her.

Secondly, an important part of workplace politics is maintaining amicable business relationships. That means knowing how to choose your battles and always having professional reasoning (as opposed to personal) behind the battles you do choose to fight. So, I don’t actually think Harry’s more “on board than ever” but rather that he’s choosing his battles. And, if we’re honest, there’s no professional reasoning behind Olivia not being at multiple shows, or being papped in his merch, or them being papped together. “You’re annoying,” and “you annoy me,” and “my die hard fans can’t stand the sight of you” (and, also apparently for Olivia, “you’re having family issues that you need to deal with”) can’t really compete with consistent engagement with tabloids, Twitter trends, conversion rates (of GP to casual listeners to stans), Harry being placed on Hollywood’s radar, etc. However, it seems like when there is solid professional reasoning behind shutting down a decision, Harry and his team do take it. We’ve seen that in the social media and print media gag order (Olivia wasn’t allowed to mention him in her Vogue interview though she tried very hard to insinuate a confirmation) and the pivot in terms of the Harry’s House narrative (that I suspect largely had to do with how they plan to navigate My Policeman promo). I think our frustration as a fandom lies in that it’s not easy for us not to equate things that are annoying with things that are damaging to our relationship with Harry because when you’re as emotionally involved as we are, it all feels the same.

Lastly, I think we have to remember that the music industry and Hollywood are entirely different beasts, and I bring that up for two reasons:

1) Stunts serve different purposes, depending on the situation. For Harry Styles, singer-songwriter, it was meant to closet him, give an intriguing background to his love songs, make people interested in him, maybe even be used as a cover for why sex-symbol-rockstar-modern-day-Rolling Stone doesn’t ever take anyone back to his hotel room.

For Harry Styles, up and coming actor, it’s both to closet him and to keep people interested in him and his projects when he technically still has nothing to show for it. You can’t be interested in an actor from that one ensemble cast three years ago, even if it was a Nolan film. There needs to be a reason for him to be top of mind, especially when he technically has no body of work to give him credibility. Like it or not, a fauxmance is the way to do that, and at the end of the day, we have to remember that Harry does want to break into Hollywood. So, he has to play the game.

2) While we often joke about Larry being the music industry’s worst kept secret, it doesn’t necessarily follow that that would be the case in Hollywood. When Harry and Louis first got together, they were incredibly young (and not very good at hiding their feelings), and the people around them held relatively close ranks. They had the same bodyguards, their band was close, they worked with the same producers and song writers, they were in the same meetings, they used the same people as the crew over and over, and that level of environmental control made it much easier to mitigate the risk of them being outed while still allowing them to be “out” in their immediate environment (whether literally or through song writing). That seemed to carry over to their solo careers, where they seem to stay within the same professional circles of people as much as possible for, I suppose, many reasons, but also because I think they’ve built the kind of trust with these people that’s really hard to come by when you’re famous and closeted.

But, Harry doesn’t have that environmental control in Hollywood. He can’t call the shots on a movie set, or handpick the crew, or have time to develop that trust with all the people around him. And so, the answer to that is, if he can’t be fully out, he has to keep up some semblance of the closet by stunting, and that means, if Olivia wants to push the boundaries of their contract by being around all the damn time, then her inescapable presence, however annoying, at least serves to keep the narrative as consistent as possible with the least amount of Harry’s effort required.

TL;DR - It’s likely that Olivia is taking advantage of loopholes in a contract that was negotiated when she had professional leverage over Harry and his team, Harry and team need to choose their battles (and, I believe, have) with regards to the stunt and technically, however frustrating Olivia’s constant presence is, it’s not professionally damaging to Harry (so far) which makes it hard to draw lines for “smaller” nuisances, stunts in the music industry vs Hollywood have different goals, and unlike in the controlled circle of his professional environment in the music industry, in Hollywood, Harry likely still needs to keep up appearances because he doesn’t have the capacity to mitigate the risk of being officially outed in such a wide group of people.

Hope that was interesting to read and was at least halfway coherent!