Imo he is a very clever man who knows exactly how to play the media.
Or he has a very good team behind him
I really don’t agree. Just look at this thread for evidence it’s not working. I think the whole thing has been handled appallingly from his first interview when he only admitted to having a drug problem, denied any drink problem and went on about how he was only stopping drinking for a short time and couldn’t wait for his next pint. I said on here at the time that he was obviously an alcoholic and his main concern in that interview was preparing the ground for him to continue drinking heavily and in public so he didn’t have to change his lifestyle and only get rid of the painkillers to get people off his back about the drinking. He still had a lot of sympathy then so I was told I was mean and there was no way I could tell that and there was no harm in him having a drink. Obviously he’s admitted it now, but people can go back and look at that interview and now they can see it’s just a manipulative man trying to con the public into thinking he’d reformed when he had no intention of doing that. They were stupid, him and his team, to do that and try and set up a situation where he could carry on drinking heavily by actively trying to deceive the public.
The divorce was awfully handled too, he wasn’t honest about it, he didn’t fess up that it was a codependent relationship based on addiction because he was still denying his alcoholism at the time. So that all blew back on him because he just looked callous, ditching the wife who had supported him through rehab according to what he’d been feeding the press up to that point - again, badly handled to try and hush up his booze problems. Lisa was incredibly upset and he treated that with disdain, even though he’d clearly hurt her terribly.
The new relationship has been terribly handled too. His people obviously thought staging photographs of the two of them doing wholesome things, looking smiley and contented, like going for walks with the dog and getting coffee or going for alcohol free meals with Dec and his pregnant wife would make people like him again and think he was wholesome and respectable. Instead it made them look callous, flaunting their happiness when Lisa was clearly still in pieces and didn’t need it shoving in her face. His people obviously leaned on the press to put pictures of Lisa looking bloated and badly dressed next to pictures of the chic, slim, healthy new woman. They obviously thought people would think ‘who could blame him’, but they didn’t, they thought how disloyal to dump a wife whose losing her looks. The meal with Dec and his wife just showed how easily the a-listers had moved on and slotted the new, more suitable for the a-list woman into her place without a moments thought for Lisa’s suffering at being replaced not just with him, but by friends and work contacts and the press too.
The return to work has been awfully handled too. He gave an interview trapping off about AA tattoos but he’s still minimising his drinking (‘I was dependent but I wasn’t drinking all the time’ bullshit), blaming his problems on depression rather than addiction, alluding to it all being Lisa’s fault for making him miserable. Going on about the crash in a really self pitying way, he was traumatised by it, it happened because he was struggling with mental health problems: like it was something done to him, not something he is responsible for. He said he only ‘kind of’ deserved to be punished for it, which is a cop out.
He also straight up lied, saying he was dealing with his booze issues already when we all know from his previous interview he wasn’t and was determined to carry on drinking. He even seems in some ways in that interview to be trying lay the groundwork for drinking again (‘I wasn’t really an alcoholic, I didn’t drink all the time.)
The whole thing has been a mess in the media from start to finish because they’ve tried to manipulate the situation and done it badly and exposed their own dishonesty several times.
Even that award - their official account was retweeting things about how much he deserved the award instead of having the good grace to admit it was a bit silly and embarrassing for him to get it.
I really can’t see him being on TV by this time next year. He’s going to fuck up again and his team are going to be incapable of handling it.