The anatomy of a celebrity break-up

Celebrity divorce lawyers have been busy... it feels like there's a new break-up hitting our news feeds every week. But as we all become more savvy to the inner workings of the A-list PR machine, how do the insiders keep reputations firmly intact?

- Annabelle Lee

Within seconds, the comments begin to pile up. It is a Friday afternoon and the latest celebrity split has just hit our Instagram feeds. The announcement sets off a ripple effect: celebrity journalists cancel their dinner plans and begin furiously typing their stories. The stars' publicists are carefully watching the reaction-there are certain details they really don't want out there (and some they definitely do). As for the celebrities everyone's talking about? She's on tour. He's cuddling up to his new girlfriend. The split happened months ago. It is only now, after multiple meetings and rewrites of the statement, that we get to know about it. Welcome to the wild world of celebrity break-ups...

I have been working as a celebrity journalist for more than a decade, and even I cannot keep up with how many showbiz break-ups there have been last year. Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn. Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas. Jodie Turner-Smith and Jwan Yosef. Britney Spears and Sam Asghari. Even Jada Pinkett Smith revealed that, while not legally divorced, she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016. And by the time you read this, there will probably be a few more to add to the list.

Something is going on in the world of showbiz-and it is not just the divorce lawyers working overtime. There is a whole host of publicists and dedicated crisis management teams who hustle behind the scenes to try to make a split appear as rosy as possible.