Celine Dion performs during One World: Together At Home presented by Global Citizen on April, 18, 2020.Getty Images/Getty Images
Multinetwork COVID jamborees. Low-tech YouTube shows sprinkled with celebrity cameos. A star-studded concert for Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday, which aired live, late and not without glitches. These virtual group hugs are the perfect platform from which to ponder: What do we want from our stars right now? Which celebs are wearing the pandemic best?
From the Greek gods to the Real Housewives, celebrity is something we have always valued. Most of us live lives that are narrower than our fantasies, so we anoint the famous to live large for us. What’s it like to have all the beauty, riches, power, privilege, access and adoration you can handle? Our stars give us an answer. But now that their parameters have shrunk, too – when, in this one way, they are “just like us” – what role do they still play?
Stronger Together, Sunday night’s multinetwork benefit for Food Banks Canada – a patchwork-quilt concert where every star born North of Forty sent a square – confirmed two basic truths: One, there is a COVID-times aesthetic for celebs, and it’s not that different from the typical Canadian one. We want our stars to look good, but not like they’re trying too hard. (Shania Twain, for example, was a titch too worried about her big hat, and Drake’s hair is suspiciously perfect.)
Two, we want a peek into their houses, where we hope to see something personal and revelatory. Celine Dion’s eccentric china! Geddy Lee’s 18 hanging basses! Margaret Atwood’s giant books! Although, Measha Brueggergosman’s prominent display of her autobiography, Something Is Always on Fire, and David Foster’s grand piano covered in Grammys (I stopped counting at 14) seemed a tad much.
If you think I’m being mean, you are confirming my next hypothesis, that snark doesn’t play in the plague. What we also want from our stars at this moment is sincerity.
“Our expectation from celebrities now is raw and uncut,” Michael Palombo, head of entertainment at Twitter Canada, said in a phone interview. “We want to see them in an authentic way, in their natural habitat, behind the scenes.”
On Twitter, where there’s a COVID-19 related Tweet every 45 milliseconds, being real (ish) gets you traffic. Dan Levy is chatting with fans about the Schitt’s Creek finale. Simu Liu is talking Marvel. Justin Trudeau even Tweet-thanked Brock Tyler, the Edmonton musician who made a video from his “speaking moistly” gaffe.
But being sincere only works if it’s true to your brand. When Chrissy Teigen offered to trade a loaf of her banana bread for lettuce, she racked up 99,000 likes because she’s already established herself as Twitter’s most eccentric homemaker, our social-media-savvy Lucille Ball.
Same for John Krasinski’s Some Good News, 15-minute videos that showcase people behaving well. Krasinski’s DIY aesthetic (his daughters made his logo) combined with celebrity cameos (Brad Pitt does weather reports from his stunning Los Angeles aerie) works, because fun-dad-with-superstar-pals is his brand.
We anoint specific stars to fill specific needs. We want Beyoncé to be impossibly glamorous, so it’s okay that on One World: Together at Home, last week’s multinetwork extravaganza, she shone like a million suns while others shivered in hoodies. We want Miley Cyrus to keep it weird, so her April 25th appearance on Saturday Night Live, where she sat by a smouldering fire pit and belted Pink Floyd while making sure one bare shoulder poked out from her parka, was perfection.
Brand Sincerity is why Jimmy Fallon’s family-goofball act is playing better than Stephen Colbert’s barbs. It’s why everyone watching Stronger Together heaved a collective “Aww!” when we saw that Will Arnett and Amy Poehler, who divorced in 2016, are sheltering together for their kids’ sake.
And it’s why Ellen DeGeneres flamed out last week, when she compared her home to a prison, while sitting in front of floor-to-ceiling windows with views of her vast greensward outside. The Twitterverse punished her with a long thread of accusations of her being mean in real life.
We’re all sheltering at home, but mansions with ocean views provide much, much more shelter, and smart stars acknowledge that. Which is why they need to offer us something beyond platitudes. “We expect a high standard of content creation,” Palombo says. “How are you going to entertain me, with what you have?” In other words, we want them to give back a little of what we’ve rewarded them for all these years: their talent.
We want what the Rolling Stones delivered in the One World concert: Not only did each Stone appear in the exact environment of our fervid imaginings – Mick in his olde-English manse, Keith in a bordello where every sofa is velvet, Ron in a glitzy L.A. shag palace – but they sounded immaculately tight. Their 10-times-10,000 hours of honing their craft was on full display, all for us.
We want vivid, pertinent angles on this crisis, like the new video for Major Lazer and Marcus Mumford’s song Lay Your Head on Me. Its choreographer, Ryan Heffington, created steps that dancers professional and non could follow, and sent them out to 209 people of all ages, races and economic levels sheltering at home in 29 different countries, united by undimmed human spirit. “I think that’s what we’re craving: reality,” Heffington told The New York Times. “Not a superficial aesthetic of what humanity is.”
By contrast, we did not want Gal Gadot and-pals’ Imagine video – and not only because some of the celebs in it had that look in their eyes that Ricky Gervais describes thusly: “I could cry at how beautiful I am.” It didn’t work because we expected better from these stars – at the very least, we expected they’d pick one key and stick to it.
What I want from celebrities is what Meryl Streep, Audra McDonald and Christine Baranski gave me on Sunday night, one hour and 53 minutes into Take Me to the World, Sondheim’s virtual birthday concert. Wearing white bathrobes, swilling red wine, martinis and Larceny bourbon, and singing The Ladies Who Lunch from Company, they used their gifts and their sheen to do things mere mortals cannot: They sang beautifully, and acted the song, too. They were themselves, yet in character – stars playing stars, infinitely refracted, to give us joy.
The Globe has five brand-new arts and lifestyle newsletters: Health & Wellness, Parenting & Relationships, Sightseer, Nestruck on Theatre and What to Watch. Sign up today.