All Pat Kingsley Has To Do Is Think It and You're Dead
I'm not just fascinated with ber-Publicist/White Witch Queen of Narnia Pat Kingsley: I want to be her. Oh, to be gliding around town in my polar bear-drawn sleigh, turning Access Hollywood producers to stone with a wave of my wand while feeding Brooke Shields 'magic' Turkish Delight that will "make all the pain go away." The Guardian gets up close and personal with Pitiless Pat, whose career spans back to clients Doris Day and Nathalie Wood. There's precious little in the piece covering what we really care about i.e., the volume and timbre of her cackling at Tom Cruise's career trajectory since he fired her but there are some morsels worth savoring:
In 1999, the Today Show banned Kingsley's clients, after, as they recalled, she forbade them from asking Calista Flockhart about her weight. They refused, she pulled Calista, Today didn't cover the film. A little while later, she punished them by refusing to allow them access to Cruise and Kidman for Eyes Wide Shut. The show's executive producer, Jeff Zucker, announced a ban on featuring her clients. But it didn't last forever. When Zucker left that job, Cruise was invited on to the show to promote Vanilla Sky. The media needed Kingsley, evidently, more than she needed them.
It brings a tear to my eye, the way Kingsley single-handedly elevated the profession of celebrity PR to heroic myth status. I would go so far as to call her a latter-day Eleanor Roosevelt for her tireless work in interview-subject-banning alone.
