The Hacks star arrived painted head-to-toe in gold, complete with wings and the statuette’s signature atom. But it wasn’t a one-off stunt. At the Critics Choice Awards, Stalter and Paul W. Downs recreated Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner’s matching Marty Supreme looks. The throughline is simple: give audiences a bit.

And the best talent have been doing versions of this for years.

Long before TikTok, Paul Rudd and Jason Segel turned a routine I Love You, Manpress junket into entertainment. Across interviews, the two became increasingly giggly and incapable of answering basic questions, leading people to believe they were probably high.

Today, that instinct is far more intentional.

Zendaya has turned the red carpet into serialized storytelling. Spider-Man brought webs. Dune brought futuristic silhouettes. Challengers brought tennis whites and Loewe stilettos pierced with tennis balls.

But the internet has also changed the stakes of the less glamorous parts of a press tour and red carpet appearances. Talent can spend days sitting in identical hotel rooms answering the same questions with the same carefully rehearsed responses…who could forget Michelle Yeoh repeating the now-infamous “flip it around, Wicked Witch!" line throughout the Wicked press tour? What began as a perfectly normal junket answer became a running internet joke precisely because audiences could suddenly see the machinery of publicity at work. The bit wasn’t intentional, but the internet created one anyway.

Why this matters: It’s a reminder that there really aren’t throwaway press moments anymore. A five-minute interview in a hotel ballroom can travel just as far as a meticulously planned red carpet appearance. Instead of treating every premiere, junket and awards show as an isolated publicity beat, think about the entire tour as one connected piece of entertainment. Give talent something that can evolve across it: a visual language, running joke, character or behavior that feels authentically theirs.