"Here's the general idea, Jenna. You and I pretend that we met while filming a movie called 'Space Attack'. [...] But out of this experience we found each other, et cetera et cetera. Five dates a week, one fight a month. And because of a product placement deal with Jamba Juice, the fight will be in a Jamba Juice."
A specific type of Fake Relationship that satirizes show business settings involving actors, singers, athletes, and other types of celebrities. When their publicist decides that their client's career is acceptably on the rise, the next move will always be to set them up with another celebrity on equal or greater levels of fame. Cue the paparazzi and Media Scrum — the two "lovebirds" are now to be photographed together on the street. They'll also attend events together, tell journalists and hosts how happy they are together, and post sickeningly sweet things on social media. This new relationship will get the tabloids, and consequently their respective fandoms, buzzing with gossip that helps keep both parties in the media conversation...at least until they break up a month later.
Unlike some other types of Fake Relationship, the Publicity Stunt Relationship is not especially prone to the fake daters developing real feelings and turning out to be compatible after all. It can happen, but the main use of this trope is used to portray the anomalously transactional way people advance their careers in show business. Often, the celebrities treat these "dates" as they would another interview or shoot: just another day on the job. While such arrangements are often relatively short-lived, a particularly ruthless publicity team might draw up contracts for several months- or years-long PR relationships (sham marriage optional). It might also take a toll on their own personal lives — not only might they grow to resent each other regardless of how fine they were with the prospect at the beginning, but it could also get in the way of potential romances with non-celebrities.
Behind the scenes, it's often an excuse to get a Celebrity Cameo/As Himself in the work.
See also Publicity Stunt, and Selling the Show. If the supposed couple is surprising on paper and that helps bring buzz, there's overlap with Shock Value Relationship. Compare Romance on the Set, for when colleagues on a project get together. It may be invoked in tandem with this trope to drum up publicity if the parties are costars due to Actor Shipping. It might also overlap with other types of Fake Relationship, or be for other career-related reasons, e.g. the supposed "partner" might make them look good by dating them, or the new "relationship" might distract from scandal. For example, studios during the The Golden Age of Hollywood were rumored to arrange lavender marriages with the dual benefits of publicity and hiding a star's sexuality.
Celebrity romances in real life are often alleged to be fauxmances: however, as this often involves gossiping about real people's love lives, No Real Life Examples, Please!.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Booty Royale: Never Go Down Without a Fight!: Haebaru Misora's agency Space Wolf partners up with Mizutani Yuki's Once Again agency to create the idol troupe Japan KGB. Mizutani has her model Hara Akira, who is gay, seduce the apparently straight Misora and covertly films the rendezvous through a window to leak it to the paparazzi, all to create a lesbianism mini-scandal to drum up publicity for the troupe. Misora and Akira become Friends with Benefits and eventually (after Misora finally admits to herself that she's bi) the Official Couple.
Comic Books
- The Fade Out: Actor Tyler Graves is rumored to be gay. The studio, wanting to make up-and-coming actress Maya Silver a proper star, decides to kill two birds with one stone and sets the two up for a PR relationship.
- In the Reality TV-esque X-Force (Milligan & Allred): Vivisector and Phat decide to pretend to be in a gay relationship because of fears that they're less popular than the other team members. After some mutual confusion, they eventually decide that they both genuinely are gay, but they aren't each other's type.
Films — Live-Action
- America's Sweethearts: Eddie Thomas and Gwen Harris, a very famous Hollywood couple, have split and Gwen has moved on to Hector. However, the executive wants to release the last film they made together, so a publicist wrangles them into a PR "reconciliation" to help promote the movie.
- At Midnight (2023): Sophie and Adam's fame is highly dependent on them being a Creator Couple In-Universe, so Sophie is scared of making the break-up public in fear of damaging her career in the process, so she has to keep the pretense that she's still dating him.
- Hail, Caesar!: The film studio invents a romance between actors Hobie and Carlotta in order to distract Hollywood gossip columnists from the actual scandals going on. They've never even met before their studio-mandated date, but they hit it off surprisingly well until Hobie catches sight of a fellow actor with a briefcase full of ransom money and has to make his excuses and rush off after him.
- Rags: Kadee and Finn were both in a contractually obligated "relationship" for the cameras. This was frustrating for Kadee, who absolutely hated Finn for his It's All About Me attitude and ego. The longer she spends time with Charlie, she grows increasingly unhappy being with Finn and eventually calls out the fact that their relationship is just a business arrangement, and that they otherwise don't even talk. At the end, she's able to happily be with Charlie, and Finn is left holding interviews about how Kadee is definitely going to want him back.
- Singin' in the Rain: The studio encourages rumors that screen partners Don and Lina are a couple for publicity, although in real life Don can't stand her. Lina, however, is constantly trying to make it real.
Literature
- The relationship being faked for publicity in How To Fake It In Hollywood is between a starlet who wants to keep her career going as her soap opera ends and a reclusive A-list heartthrob who needs to clean up his act. Though their relationship starts as juicy gossip fodder, it later gives way to real feelings.
- The Hunger Games: The glamour-obsessed Capitol treats the contestants of the titular battle royale as celebrities, giving them a full media blitz before they all brutally kill each other. The two contestants of District 12, Katniss and Peeta, are encouraged by their handler Haymitch to play up a romance between them, as it will draw viewers and sponsor gifts that will give them greater chances at surviving the Game. Katniss is reluctant to do so but reneges when more displays of affection give them better gifts and even a rare rules change to allow surviving co-champions. The "co-champions" offer to turns out to be a lie, but Peeta and Katniss force the Game's hand by attempting to commit suicide together. Afterward, they realize their act of defiance made them a target of the government, so they have to keep up the act of a couple after the Game in an attempt to seem like they were just lovestruck teenagers too emotional to want to live without each other.
- Iron Widow: Zetian and Li Shimin know that their status as press-ganged mecha pilots is precarious, so to make themselves too famous to dispose of, they sign a media contract that promotes them as a Battle Couple of darkly alluring anti-heroes. They do end up in a real relationship, but keep that part private.
Live-Action TV
- 30 Rock: James Franco's manager asks Jenna to pretend to date Franco. This is proposed as a business transaction: Jenna gets the media attention she craves, and James Franco wants to "dispel certain unsavory rumors" about his sex life (he's secretly in love with a Japanese body pillow). They sign a detailed contract (specifying things like "number of fights per month") and at first Jenna is thrilled, but she eventually breaks it off to pursue a real relationship.
- 45 RPM: While filming a movie, Robert is asked to stage a relationship with Fanny, the female lead, to help with the film's promotion. Eventually Fanny snaps when her boss wants to take the farce all the way to marriage, and this, combined with Robert's feelings for Maribel, results in their breakup.
- Best Love: Actor Dokko Jin and singer/host Kang Se-ri broke up a year ago, but their teams have them pretend they're still together because it's good for their images. Jin developing feelings for Se-ri's rival/former groupmate Ae-jung makes that a little more complicated.
- Castle: "Reality Star Struck" revolves around a murder on a Real Housewives-inspired Reality Show that initially seems to have been fueled by an extramarital affair between two of the cast members. Castle and Beckett later catch the supposedly estranged spouses, Bob and Hannah, in flagrante delicto, and learn that the affair wasn't real: they made the story up to get the spotlight back when another storyline drew the cameras away from them.
- Girls5eva has more than one member of the titular girl group:
- Summer was initially set up with boy band member Kev by their respective teams to advertise Noxzema. They ended up with a long-running but mutually unhappy marriage.
- Wickie was briefly in a relationship with fellow late 90's musician Torque. She clarifies that it was PR, because Torque was High-School Sweethearts with his then-wife and she was boring.
- During the Hannah Montana episode "Cheat It", Hannah dates fellow popular singer Austin Rain chiefly to promote a collaboration song. The two actually despise each other, but pretend to be lovey-dovey in public (until Miley decides to reveal the truth on a talk show).
- Mystery Science Theater 3000: The last few episodes of season 11 involve Kinga Forrester trying to get married to Jonah Heston as a publicity stunt.
- In "Wizards of the Lost Kingdom 2", Kinga decides the best way to achieve both her goals (a media empire worth billions and a family) is to get married on the show as a publicity stunt. And she realizes her test subject Jonah Heston is the perfect sucker to marry, because: "A beautiful, sarcastic woman married to a big oaf. Oh, whoa! That is TV gold!"
- In "Carnival Magic", Kinga proposes to Jonah, and threatens to cut off his oxygen supply if he says no. Meanwhile, Kinga's Ignored Enamored Underling Max is crushed by this development. The wedding plans continue in "The Christmas That Almost Wasn't", and Kinga even claims that her wedding is more important than Christmas itself.
- The season finale, "At the Earth's Core" features the wedding day itself. But before the vows can be exchanged, Max interrupts the ceremony by attacking Jonah with a giant robotic snake, which seemingly kills him. When Jonah returns in the next season premiere, "Mac and Me", Kinga has already moved on to a new evil scheme and no longer has any interest in marrying him—and is in fact so unconcerned for Jonah himself, she doesn't even let him explain how he survived the robot snake attack.
- Sense8: Lito's "arrangement" with Daniela is initially done to hide his homosexuality and keep her away from her abusive ex, but that they're costars and it helps their respective telenovela/film careers is a tertiary benefit.
- S.W.A.T.: In "The Tiffany Experience", the titular Tiffany is officially happily dating a fellow online celebrity Tristan who makes elaborate prank stunts. However, as Jessica Cortez discovers whilst guarding her from a crazed stalker, the two aren't actually together and are simply "cross-pollinating" each other's feeds, further empathising how shallow and fake Tiffany's supposedly caring brand really is. It ends up going horribly wrong as said crazed stalker ends up seeing Tristan as an obstacle to him being with Tiffany and murders him, ignoring his pleas that they're not really dating as further a sign of him not being worthy of her.
- The Other Two: Teen Idol Chase's record label is continuously trying to stunt-date him with famous women to help his branding.
- In season 1 he has a "relationship" with a well-known teenage influencer to help his social media which lasts all of a day.
- When he turns 18 in season 3 they try to marry him to Kiernan Shipka so he can be seen as a grown man, but he wants to pursue a relationship with a non-famous girl. Shipka, as an entrenched member of what Shuli calls "the Hollywood elite", doesn't seem to bat an eye at the prospect of being engaged to a stranger.
Visual Novels
- It takes place in two stories of Choices: Stories You Play:
- In Platinum, publicist Fiona orchestrates a stunt relationship between Cadence and singer Raleigh Carrera to keep Cadence in the spotlight while she works on her first album. However, the two had already met before that point and Raleigh is one of the novel's Love Interests, so depending on the player's actions, a Romantic Fake–Real Turn can happen later in the story.
- In Foreign Affairs, Kennedy is suggested to do a publicity stunt with Alexei or Evelyn (depending on player choice) to try to clean up his/her name after he/she was exposed along with his/her love interest on the cover of Voyeur magazine.
Western Animation
- In the Ben 10: Ultimate Alien episode "Hero Time", Ben briefly enters a fake relationship with celebrity Jennifer Nocturne to boost both of their careers after he saves her from a (staged) hostage situation, despite Ben already having a girlfriend. Said girlfriend Julie is annoyed but not jealous because she knows Ben's not interested in Jennifer, and she has a bigger "crush" on his childhood hero Captain Nemesis. Ben even uses the "cross-pollination" phrasing when describing it to his friends as he was coached by Jennifer's agent on how this sort of thing works.
- Played with on BoJack Horseman: After her starlet client Courtney starts being seen as a priss, Princess Carolyn gets the idea to have her date and eventually marry PC's bum friend Todd. The idea is that Courtney will be seen as down-to-earth for being willing to date a loser nobody. However, not only does Todd become a model thanks to this newfound exposure, he also decides not to go through with the relationship.
- In the Celebrity Superhero world of The Boys: Diabolical, supes Nubian Prince and Nubia were set up by their corporate backers Vought to act as a famous Battle Couple. While there were genuine sparks in the beginning, in the present their relationship has soured near irrevocably, and they begin divorce proceedings.
- The Critic: In "All the Duke's Men", Duke Phillips announces in a press conference his marriage to June Lockhart of Lost in Space fame ("everybody's favorite TV mom") in order to sway the female vote, as his adviser said women do not consider him a family man. This is lampshaded by a reporter at the conference.
Reporter: Mr. Phillips, what do you say to those who claim this marriage is just an outrageous publicity stunt?Duke: I say "gaze into the hypnotic power of my Evil Eye!"
- The Simpsons: In "A Fish Called Selma", Marge's sister Selma gets married to Troy McClure, mostly for Troy to boost his career on his agent's advice. However, she draws the line at having children: a loveless marriage is one thing, but to bring up a child in a loveless marriage is too far.
