Hollywood’s big, emotional “Wicked” press tour has been a spectacle for the ages, and not in a good way. Between teary-eyed interviews, theatrical sobbing moments, and endless PR choreography, the campaign has felt less like promotion and more like a performance of vulnerability designed to distract from substance. The duo of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo have been at the center of it, trading earnest confessions and close-on-camera emotion that the media gobbled up and turned into memes.
Things got stranger when the tour turned from theatrical to logistical: missed premieres, health excuses, and even physical safety scares have dotted the itinerary. Universal confirmed that Cynthia Erivo lost her voice and the pair skipped interviews at the New York premiere, while Grande missed other events after plane issues and a red carpet attack in Singapore highlighted the chaotic nature of modern celebrity tours. These constant disruptions feed the sense that the tour is a tightly managed PR circus rather than an honest conversation about art.
Meanwhile, other cast members have gone viral for quirks and odd soundbites, proving that the press circuit rewards spectacle over substance. Michelle Yeoh, for example, lit up social feeds by repeating an anecdote about her character’s initials, showing how any little theatrical tick becomes a trending moment when the media wants it to. That same appetite for viral nonsense has amplified the most performative and exhausting moments from Grande and Erivo until the public has grown numb.
On Megyn Kelly’s show, Maureen Callahan and Kelly tore into Hollywood’s unrealistic beauty and sensitivity standards, arguing that the whole body-positivity-industrial complex has been exposed as hollow. Callahan called out the endless celebrity advice and the cult of curated wellness as largely performative, and Kelly pushed back on the idea that emotional grandstanding should be rewarded with sympathy. Conservatives should welcome this reckoning: Americans are tired of elites preaching virtue while manufacturing melodrama and selling products that profit from insecurity.
Public reaction has been volatile and unforgiving, with fans and critics alike oscillating between mockery and anger online as every awkward clip is mined for outrage. Community threads and social chatter show both genuine concern for overexposure and a growing distaste for celebrities who weaponize feelings to defend themselves from scrutiny. This backlash is not petty — it’s the public reclaiming common sense from a celebrity class that has spent years treating sincerity as a branding tool.
Make no mistake: the entertainment-industrial complex benefits when audiences are kept off balance, emotionally dependent, and endlessly entertained by manufactured controversy. Shows like Megyn Kelly’s and commentators like Maureen Callahan are doing the work conservative Americans have been doing all along — calling out hypocrisy and demanding accountability, not applause for performative fragility. The sooner people stop mistaking theatrics for authenticity, the sooner ordinary citizens can steer cultural attention back to real achievement and resilient character.
If the press tour and the body-positivity rhetoric taught us anything, it’s this: Americans value strength, honesty, and decency — not endless emotional theater. We should be skeptical of any culture that elevates feelings into replacement facts and monetizes vulnerability while mocking common-sense values. It’s time to turn off the scripted sympathy, put down the popcorn, and reward creators who actually respect their audiences instead of manipulating them.
