Reese Witherspoon ’s “award winning”
performance as a concerned wife this past weekend landed her a less than
prestigious seat in Atlanta’s jail.
Atlanta’s rise in the film industry in
recent years has brought great economic benefit to Georgia, but will this
benefit be coupled with negative press for many important people involved? For
Reese Witherspoon it is yet to be determined.
Witherspoon apologized this week after her
run-in with the cops early last Friday morning. What began as a common weekend occurrence
in the lively city of Atlanta, ended up sounding like a scene from an emotional
Witherspoon drama-- The actress got a little out of hand (verbally) with a police officer while her husband, Jim Toth, was being arrested for a DUI.
Having had time to sober up,
Witherspoon apologized profusely for her behavior.
“I do want to say, I clearly had one
drink too many and I am deeply embarrassed about the things I said,” the
actress said in a statement. “It was definitely a scary situation and I was
frightened for my husband, but that is no excuse. I was disrespectful to the
officer who was just doing his job. I have nothing but respect for the police,
and I'm very sorry for my behavior.”
Witherspoon,
whose earlier films include Legally Blonde
and Sweet Home Alabama, won a shelf
full of awards, in addition to her performance as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line.
Witherspoon was the latest actress to be crowned
“America's Sweetheart” on the heels of Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts. Yet in
person, neither one of these two actresses are known for being sweet or light
on her feet. Ryan is quiet and introverted while Roberts has a biting whit and
doesn’t seem to “suffer a fool.”
So who is Witherspoon really? Is she the charmer from Sweet
Home Alabama or the entitled star on display in that matter-of-fact police
report last weekend in Atlanta?
“It's a PR nightmare ,” Paul Dergarabedian
says, Chief Analyst at Hollywood.com,
“particularly for a star who's not known as being edgy. But it definitely
raises her profile right now, for better or for worse.”
Still, the damage is done, and there's no undoing it, says
Janice Min, editor in chief of the Hollywood Reporter.
“It's a terrible
thing to happen to someone with this sort of image. She's not 22. She's a
mother of three. Thank God they didn't kill someone. It's a perfect storm of
terrible: the time of night, the way she's reported to have behaved, and her
using celebrity as a way out."
"In terms of her career, it comes at a
vulnerable point," Min says. "She hasn't had a major blockbuster in
quite a while. For the movie she's doing right now, it creates problems because
the narrative will be about her being arrested while she was filming it. I
thought her apology was as good as you can get. She said the right things. But
an apology can't erase the facts. It's in such stark contrast to the public
perception of her."
The facts have been laid on the table, and
Ms. Witherspoon has been found guilty... But are there ways to diminish this
story’s impact on public opinion?
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We know there are many PR strategies available that can be
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