Have you seen Anna’s latest photo of her and Michael? Doesn’t Michael look so sad and tired? I feel like the whole vibe is just like they’ve just had a fight and are trying to keep it together for the camera, and the kids.
Hello, Anon. I did indeed see the picture that Anna posted last week, and it's honestly hard to know where to begin. First, let's get a visual up, for anyone who hasn't yet seen it:
What I first thought of when seeing this pic was, "How does this even look like a night out?" They're posed against a blank blue wall that gives no context as to where they are or how this has anything to do with a night out. But what came to mind next was that AL posted this specifically because she wanted the same thing that Georgia got when she posted a picture of her and David in an Insta story earlier in the week, which is to have people sharing it all over Twitter and gushing about her and Michael being "couple goals."
The problem, though, is that in the pictures Georgia posts, David at least does not look like he is being held hostage in them. It's that even though those pictures may be posed, Georgia is very adept at being subtle and making them look spontaneous. AL, however, is not...and the harder she tries to make her and Michael's relationship look like Georgia and David's, the more obvious it is that it's not.
What truly confounds me is that we're expected to believe Michael is happy in that picture, especially when we look at it side-by-side with this picture that was taken just one day prior:
When I look at the picture on the left, to me, that is the real Michael Sheen--the man who loves being out in the community and meeting people. In the picture on the right, that is Michael playing a role, the version of himself that exists in AL's fantasy/idea of what their relationship is...but it's clearly not a role he believes in (the difference is particularly visible in his eyes, which are sparkling and bright in the picture on the left, in stark contrast to how dull and lifeless they are on the right). And the thing for me is, if Michael doesn't believe in that role, then why should any of us? It just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
Overall, though, it's just...really a terrible picture? Even the composition of it next to the picture on the left is so strange, because they're both selfies, yet Michael looks so subdued in the picture with her--perhaps that sad/tired vibe that you were describing, Anon. AL clearly had agency over when/where that picture was taken, and yet she still chose to post it. There were so many choices being made here, and it's sort of mind-boggling to me how astoundingly bad a lot of them were.
To make matters even worse, just a few days later, it came to light that the big "night out" was them going to see a play at a community theater in Swansea, and Michael meeting with people from a charity that he supports, Adferiad Recovery:
Yet there was no reference made to any of this in AL's Insta post--not of the play, nor of the charity of which Michael is a patron, and which she could've easily mentioned. If this was in fact the night out in question, it makes it seem like she was using him for PR and had no problem making his work about her and being purposely misleading about what happened while showing how little she cares about his charity work in the process.
The sad thing is, this isn't even the first time she's done this. In the week before the Insta post, it came to my attention that AL retweeted two of Michael's Mab Gwalia videos, and immediately followed that with a retweet of this:
For those who may not have keyed into the meaning behind the acorn emojis in the caption, Anna seems to be bragging about Michael staring at her tits. (Though personally that is not even remotely close to my interpretation of this picture.) Painfully unfunny, and embarrassing as all get-out to boot. So she retweets the videos of his charity for PR, but it's when she retweets this picture and writes in her own voice that her true nature comes to light, which seems to involve not caring how bad she makes him look.
When the Insta picture was posted, I had several people DMing me about it, so I'd like to wrap this up by sharing a few things that were said, as I think they perfectly sum up what my feelings are. One person said to me that Michael and AL "can’t achieve the same look of happiness together as they can apart" and that "the weird distance" between them "is always present." I'm just not getting "couple" energy from them in that picture, and if Anna's reason for posting it was to convey that, I'd say she achieved the opposite effect instead.
The other thing I'd like to share comes from @thetardisisblueandroseistoo, in response to the fans who did share the picture on Twitter (though I didn't see it on any other social media channels, strangely enough) and who have gushed over Michael and AL as "couple goals":
"[...]All four people [Michael, AL, David, Georgia] are "couple goals" because they're presenting as straight, white, and monogamous. They are comfortable to consume and stan when presented like that. But if you pause and think maybe David and Georgia are open, David is very probably at least bi, Anna is collateral, and Michael is a serial womanizer that fell in love with his married male co-star, that's a lot less comfortable to think about. Fans project onto them, but instead of these people having the same problems that "normal people" have, they evidently have no problems at all. They're projecting an idea of infallibility onto all of them."
As anyone who follows my blog knows, I ardently ship Michael and David. But when I talk about their relationship, it's always from the perspective of what might be, and what seems probable from what has been publicly presented. Do I also discuss fantasies involving the two of them? Absolutely. But (I hope, anyway) that distinction between reality and fantasy is clear, whereas I don't see that at all in the people who vigorously defend Michael and AL's relationship. These fans see what they want to be true of that relationship, rather than discussing the reality of what the situation might actually be.
My aim in having these conversations on my blog and answering these Anons is to let people know that it's okay to ask these questions. It's okay to see Michael and David (and AL and Georgia) as human beings, instead of as "perfect" or "flawless." And it's okay for us to be honest about what we are seeing, especially when pictures like this are posted and stand out to so many of us for all the wrong reasons.
So those are my thoughts on the picture from last week. How accurate (or not) I may be in my observations, who knows. But I think it speaks volumes that more and more people seem to be noticing the marked difference in Michael's appearance and expression in pictures with AL versus with other people, and how that does not seem to bode well for their relationship. I guess we'll just have to see what happens...
