Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Getty Images, TODAY via YouTube

It’s no longer enough for a movie to have a memorable poster and a preview. It’s no longer enough to have an A-list cast do a few photo shoots and appear on late-night TV. Audiences want more, and the game book for celebrity press tours is now a game of attention-based hot potato. Casts not only subject themselves to relentless promotion but strive to generate their own story alongside their movie, oftentimes becoming a meme of their own making. 2025 capped off with the bizarre and bemusing press tour for Wicked, which drew upon Barbie’s culture jacking and unprecedented amount of “acting delulu,” perhaps inspiring a number of other celebrities to behave in all sorts of ways as they went out to plug their flicks throughout the year. Most of them did a good job. Some went above and beyond.

SNL50 was many things: a celebration of Lorne Michaels, three hours long, and yet another chance to see Meryl Streep and Martin Short together. Perhaps most compelling of the special’s interwoven narratives is who of the contemporary celebrity culture was worthy of playing a part. Sabrina Carpenter was there, yes, duetting with Paul Simon, as was Bad Bunny, but it was the omnipresence of the very game and very charming Pedro Pascal that felt like the biggest announcement of the star’s presence. SNL’s Domingo was solidly a product of 2024, but it was Pascal’s performance in the sketch as Domingo’s brother, Ronaldo, that kicked off his big year featuring four central performances: three on film in Eddington, Materialists, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and wrapping up his stint on The Last of Us. SNL50 was chockablock full of celebrities, alums, and well-wishers alike, but it was Pascal’s appearance that felt like the biggest launchpad for the ever-growing and internet-beloved star.

A new slew of directors became household names. Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby), Celine Song (Materialists), Benny Safdie (The Smashing Machine), and Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme) cemented themselves as individual artists to know and watch beyond their cinephile fan bases — but it was the success of Sinners and Ryan Coogler’s big-time blank check that launched the Black Panther and Creed director into the pantheon of greats. His heartfelt thank-you letter to fans for making the film a runaway smash emphasized his influences, inspirations, and ongoing belief in the strength of the big-screen experience. If anyone single-handedly championed the power of pictures this year, it was Coogler.

The best bit of press for Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship wasn’t an interview with the director or even its stars, Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd, but a late-2024 anecdote from Brooks Whelan on Late Night With Seth Meyers about his ongoing group chat with Robinson called “Spider League.” Robinson, Whelan, and a few friends will frequently compare spiders they find and see, but Whelan’s ongoing penchant for jokes and bits in that chat led to Robinson suspending him. It would have been plenty funny as a one-and-done story, but Robinson and Whelan, and Robinson once again, continued to provide updates throughout the year on Los Angeles’s most tumultuous group chat.

You wouldn’t have any idea that most of what happens in Warfare involves guys screaming and bleeding out on the floor of an abandoned house from the way A24 hammered home the undeniable giggly, sweetie quality of the film’s ensemble. Okay, maybe you would, because the movie is literally called Warfare. Still, most of the promotional material around the movie sidelined the ever-dour Alex Garland and his real-life veteran co-writer, Ray Mendoza, in favor of gimmicks like Michael Gandolfini introducing his co-stars. Even Cosmo Jarvis looked like he was having fun (well, not exactly, but … as close as he gets, maybe).

The History of Sound is nowhere near as physically violent as Warfare (emotionally violent, however; there, it might have the latter film beat), but that didn’t stop its otherwise serious co-stars Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal from cracking each other up throughout their shared press tour. They made the case alongside the Warfare boys that some of these press obligations are better done with company: someone to riff, laugh, or do Ron Burgundy impressions with.

Remember when he drove up to the red carpet of his own movie?

There were few films this year more divisive than Celine Song’s sophomore feature, Materialists, which, depending on who you talked to, either saved or condemned the romantic comedy. Song’s press tour for the film felt a little like a grad-school seminar, hammering home the themes of capitalism and the role it plays in contemporary dating and marriage, while rebuking any attempts to memeify her film (good for her). Despite all that serious stuff, when forced to choose a “culturally essential” movie, Song zagged and named Zootopia. “I just feel like maybe I relate to that bunny, just dreaming about something that she believes in,” she said, and who are we to disagree?

Marketing a big-budget movie now requires its cast not only to act and perform in said big-budget movie but subsequently perform a series of lip-syncing videos that will “do numbers” on Reels and TikTok. Is this why anyone goes to drama school? Not really, and most of the time, you can feel the contractual obligations wafting through your small screen. The Superman cast, however, pulled off the impossible in making this all look like so much fun. David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and (blond) Nicholas Hoult made sketch after lip sync after gimmick look easy, breezy, and optional.

Here’s hoping by now someone has invited him to a bachelor party.

Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson had great comedic and romantic chemistry in Akiva Schaffer’s reboot of The Naked Gun, all of which was enriched by the too-good-to-be-true IRL romance they seemed to be sharing during the promotional tour. They held hands, they shared sweet stories about the other on late-night shows, and Neeson straight up said he was “madly in love” with his co-star. In December, however, Anderson confessed that the two only spent an “intimate week” with each other right after filming ended. What happened after, she admitted, was “real,” but only as real friends.

We should be grateful, maybe, that the price of a Hamnet ticket doesn’t come with a little pack of Kleenex to mop up your tears, but that might make more sense than the five-minute guided meditation that director Chloé Zhao led with cast members Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley and film-festival audiences. While well intended, Zhao’s practice is the exact type of self-serious stunt that’s made the movie one of this year’s Oscar villains.

Chase Infiniti was undoubtedly the breakout star of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, not only because of her dazzling performance in the film but also her light touch when it came to making memes with her older co-stars. Both Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro patiently appeared in a handful of Reels promoting the film, proving you can teach an old(ish) dog new tricks.

Michelle Yeoh made up for whatever it is she’s doing in Wicked: For Good by leaning into a single repeated line in all of her interviews, which helped to contextualize the deal with her teacher-gone-wrong character in the film. “Madame Morrible,” she’d begin, stating her character’s name in the movie, before explaining that if you flip those letters around, they equal WW, or “Wicked Witch.” Complete with its own hand motion à la last year’s finger grab, Yeoh’s go-to line became the year’s bewildering Wicked press-tour meme we needed.

Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson are, in some sense, star-crossed co-stars: They both got their start as teen actors in franchises before aging into much weirder and singular stars as they hit their 30s. They worked together for the first time in Lynne Ramsay’s searing Die My Love, playing a married couple on the brink of collapse. While their agony and anger in the film is harsh and uncomfortable, their joint press tour was anything but. Both candid, funny, and delightfully strange, the two yukked it up, bringing out that which is most lovable in each of them.

the #EllaMcCayChallenge pic.twitter.com/MI1Lmv8ZOB

— M*chael R*berts (@michaelsroberts) November 27, 2025

There’s still time for someone from this cast to do the Ella McCay challenge.

video93884728.mp4 pic.twitter.com/JC4W0BLrQ8

— Timothée Chalamet (@RealChalamet) November 15, 2025

Where to begin? The blimp, Marty jackets, the orange ping-pong balls, the fake Zoom meeting with his PR team, Susan Boyle, the Sphere, a verse on an EsDeeKid remix — at the time of writing, Timothée Chalamet is still going (probably), working overtime to get butts in theaters and an Oscar in his hand.

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