I have been Anon informed that my opinion on anything that happened before December is invalid, so let's talk about the Big Issue of the day: Baby Daddy Stan. Or at the very least, the handling of the entire situation from a PR perspective. Because it's been divisive, although primarily down the same Shipper/ Anti-Shipper lines most things seem to be these days.
Now, I will be posting and talking about paparazzi images in this, and I cannot stress enough that I feel disgusting doing so, but I've got them from other blogs on here instead of from the outlets themselves so it feels slightly more forgivable in my head, and as I believe these absolutely are pap walks, that makes it feel more forgivable too. It's not privacy invasion if you organised the paps to photograph you, as I've said. I will also be discussing parts of this that are inconsistent, and a big part of that is Annabelles bump. This is not to body shame her, I need that to be very clear, but simply to talk about how things do or do not line up.
In mid December DeuxMoi (Yuck) posted an Anon submission claiming that they saw Sebsatian with an "older woman" looking at rings in Cartier. Sebastian is a brand ambassador for Cartier, so it makes sense he would go there for a ring. He'd been with Annabelle for nearly 4 years, so about time if you go by societal norms to pop the question.
There's only one problem. It was AI. It was a set up, a test. And DeuxMoi failed.
There is a full explainer of the situation on ContractuallyCursed for your reading pleasure.
This wasn't Stan or Wallis PR, but it did gain a lot of traction and attention in the fandom. The kind of attention that could really benefit a couple, especially one with such a defined division in the fandom about whether or not people even believed they were in a real relationship.
Then to really spice things up, on the 22nd of December Sebastian was spotted catching up with Ana de Armas outside a gym in LA.
And many fans noted not only that he quite clearly checked out her ass (dirty dog) but that he looked much more relaxed and happy in this encounter than the majority of times we saw him with Annabelle. And a bunch of people thought Ana and Sebastian would be a much better match than Annabelle and Sebastian. Which, well, not great relationship PR unless this meet cute was a soft launch of a break up and new relationship. Rumours abound, and many assumed that if he & Annabelle hadn't broken up already, they would soon.
However, on Valentines Day, as predicted by many, we got a pap walk. One of few couple pap walks, and... Well...
They looked miserable. Shippers were elated, they assumed Annabelle was wearing one of Sebastians go to jackets, they were bathing in the love & romance in the photos that only they could see. The rest of us wondered how another pap walk could come out of the pair where no pictures made it look like they actually liked each other. Then came a video...
As is regular when we get behind the scenes of red carpets or pap walks of the pair, it doesn't help. Yeah they're holding hands, but they still don't look like they want to be there with each other which is extra weird because it's Valentines, it's the day where society says romance is king. And instead of looking like a couple in love celebrating their relationship, it looks like your friends parents who are only staying together for the kids. And they arranged this.
Then there was nothing much of note until TMZ entered the chat on the 16th of March with a leak that many people feel came from Team Wallis at least, if not from both teams as a joint bit of PR planting.
Then silence. Nothing from either camp. No statements, no confirmation, no dismissal. Just silence. The fanbase was divided, even beyond the normal. Some were unsure if it could be true because sometimes TMZ get's it right. Now, as I've said before, we're not owed information, but when something leaks it should be addressed one way or another, unless the point is to create discussion while technically keeping your hands clean as a whistle.
But in April the discourse got even more muddied, when the pap walks started. And boy howdy, it was a fucking mess out there! Which of course, was probably the point.
14th April - Large bump
16th April - Larger bump
17th April - Small bump?
24th April - Medium sized bump... And a couple walk after Tumblr noted that they were never seen together, and this visibly heavily pregnant woman was walking two dogs alone. And weird that the paparazzi spotted her without her significantly more famous baby daddy.
28th April - Mystery sized bump covered in a massive coat on a day when everyone around her is in t-shirts and shorts. And from personal experience, I was always too fucking hot when I was pregnant, wearing a massive goddamn coat in warm weather would have had me on the floor.
29th April - She posted then deleted then cropped and reposted the first picture, I didn't see the original. The second was posted by someone else, the other person in the picture I assume. You can, I assume, guess what happened next. Where's the bump? We'd been seeing bumps big enough to put more distance between them than that.
30th April - Another hidden bump... IMO a relatively small one more in line with the previous picture. Also this fucking pap walk had shippers swooning over how stylish she was and saying she should style Sebastian. Let that marinate.
03rd May - Posted by Jessie as part of a photo set to celebrate his event thing. This one really stirred up discussion because her outfit really didn't give anything away bump wise, and some were convinced there was no bump. There is. But the straight on, black on black framed by loose red, just camouflages it.
05th May - Smaller bump than most of the pap walks, first is a pap shot second was posted by one of her friends on Insta. This was the first actual, visible, clear, non pap walk photo of the bump, from an official source technically. Surely there would be a statement now?
08th May - No statement, just another pap walk a few days later. This bump looks more like the one we saw in the previous pictures. Finally, some consistency!
The ever changing bump size, the excessive amounts of pap walks, the continued silence... It all created a buzz, negative on one side and positive on the other, as people tried to work out what the fuck was going on. Theories were abound: It was fake and she was wearing a bump suit for attention, they were using a surrogate and she was wearing a bump suit so no-one would ask about the surrogacy, Sebastian had a side chick who was pregnant and she was wearing a bump suit because they were taking full custody and she was covering it all up, she's actually pregnant and it's Sebastians but she baby trapped him, she's actually pregnant and it's Sebastians but he only got her pregnant so his mum could have a grandchild before she eventually died, she's actually pregnant but it's not Sebastians, and of course she's actually pregnant and they're both super happy because they are genuinely in love.
I must stress, no-one owes fans information about their private life, but this situation in my opinion should have had something. Because unlike a slew of other private celebrities who managed to keep an entire pregnancy and birth on the downlow, only to announce that a child exists at some point in the future, there is visible evidence that something is going on and they are fucking around doing pap walks instead of just saying something. That says they want people to know, they want the attention and buzz from it, they just also want to be able to claim they're soooooooo private they wont even talk about it at all. And it's hypocritical.
Then something popped up on eBay that created a buzz...
Someone was selling a few advanced copies of his Deadline cover, and "prepares for both fatherhood and playing a villain" and everyone assumed this would actually be the time he mentioned it. Finally. Right? Wrong. When the interview came out the interviewer said it, but he never acknowledged it. All we got was one singular line that may not even be related to his current situation:
“I want to be a good dad,” he says simply.
All of this, the manipulation and hypocrisy and childish nonsense, is what caused fans to start jumping ship. They were disappointed in the way Sebastian specifically handled this, the way both teams did nothing to try and stem the flow of rumours and conspiracies, and the way it made them feel like they were just pawns being used in a game they never signed up for.
And that is the biggest PR fail you can manage as far as I'm concerned.
And then Cannes happened, and fuck me. What was that?
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