5 Celebrity Power Couples Whose Publicists Must Think We’re Stupid

No matter how much we admire their output, none of us really knows our favorite celebrities. Everything we think we know is usually crafted by a team of public relations experts to endear them to their audiences.

As cynical as it may sound, this extends to their love lives. We're not saying there are no examples of true love to be found among the stars, but the most outward displays of this kind of romance almost always come with an agenda.

“PR couples,” as snarky fans call them, are made up of two celebrities who’ve been set up by their team to be seen together in public and get people talking. Maybe they’re using romance rumors to create some buzz ahead of an upcoming project. Maybe one person’s profile is being raised by being seen with someone more famous (like the no-shame game played by Julia Fox). These pairings are so commonplace they're not even that entertaining anymore.

But when the normally unsuspecting public smells a rat and calls out a blatantly phony romance, you know you’ve flown too close to the sun. Here are five such relationships where fans weren’t feeling the love.

Jack Harlow and Dua Lipa
Rapper Jack Harlow’s last album Come Home the Kids Miss You featured a song called “Dua Lipa,” in which he says he’s “tryna do more with her than do a feature.” Like a gentleman, Harlow said he asked permission to name the song after the singer and per his own account, she said “I suppose it’s OK” and then “just let it go.” This is the kind of missed-shot story you couldn’t torture out of most people, but their publicists expect us to believe he recovered from her underwhelming response. As of December, the two are supposedly dating. It’s unclear what this arrangement is supposed to accomplish. Will “Dua Lipa” the song be Harlow's next remix single? Will Dua Lipa the person be a featured performer? She's on every other remix ever so might as well. Only time will tell what these two are promoting.

Pete Davidson and Emily Ratajkowski
When was the last time Pete Davidson was in a real relationship? This is the question on everyone’s minds, including the people banging out “Who cares????” in the Facebook comments section at this very moment. Speaking of banging, most people believe his last true love was Ariana Grande, his former fiancée, who overshared (favorably, at least) about his penis one too many times. Could there have been real feelings behind the fling with Kim Kardashian that got Davidson killed (if only in song) by Kanye West? Opinions differ, but everyone can agree that the comedian's recent courtside courtship with Ratajkowski, a newly single hottie who needed an attention-grabbing rebound (sound familiar?) was bogus. Their romance lasted a lukewarm 44 days.

Tom Holland and Zendaya
Believing in a romantic relationship between any set of Spider-Man leads is like believing in Santa Claus at this point. It’s a fun tradition and the kids seem to enjoy it, but at some point we have to stop kidding ourselves. There have been three live-action Spider-Man franchises in the past 20 years, and all of the lead actors (Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone and the currently reigning Holland and Zendaya) have dated each other. Some of these stars have admittedly had convincing chemistry. Holland and Zendaya are considered a Gen Z power couple, and there are fans to this day holding out for Stone and Garfield, who split in 2015, to reunite. Unfortunately, it’s pretty clear at this point who’s really leaving the presents under the tree.

Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde
What really went down during the production and promotion of Don’t Worry Darling, the 2022 thriller directed by Wilde and starring Styles, is unknowable. Much like the film itself, which takes place in a seemingly utopian 1950s community, nothing was ever as it seemed, and it became increasingly hard to tell what was real and what was for the press. Amid rumors of on-set rivalries between Wilde and star Florence Pugh, the shady timeline of Wilde’s relationships with Styles and longtime partner Jason Sudeikis (who, in another bizarre twist, denied having Wilde served with custody papers while she was speaking onstage at CinemaCon) — and Shia LaBeouf, of all people, coming in hot with the receipts to show he was not fired from the movie as Wilde suggested — only one thing seemed certain: Styles and Wilde’s hot-and-cold romance was all part of the show, as the pair split up shortly after the promotion cycle. It’s also worth noting that audiences didn’t find the film nearly as interesting as the drama behind it.

Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott
It may seem far-fetched to allege that a long-term relationship that has produced two children is fake, but we’re not talking about the real world here. We’re talking about the Kardashian-Jenner world, a place where meticulously crafted family units are at the core of their aspirational narrative. It's a place where sisters tell each other they're "the least exciting to look at," where sex tapes are magically leaked with perfect timeliness and where mothers cheer on daughters with the now iconic saying "You're doing great sweetie" as they disrobe for the camera. It's bizarro world. For years, fans scrutinizing the couple's public appearances have pointed out a lack of chemistry between the rapper and his on-again-off-again girlfriend. In an infamous GQ video where Scott attempts to answer questions about his partner, he appears to know less about the mother of his children than her haters do — not even the names of her dogs. Come on! The arrangement has been criticized by some as “co-parenting with benefits” and yet some others believe the whole thing's entirely staged for publicity (real children notwithstanding). Regardless, nobody seems to be feeling the fireworks, including the couple themselves, who broke up again this past Sunday.