<\/p>\n
Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/em><\/p>\n Good thing Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce\u2019s engagement<\/a> is there to soften the blow, because this summer\u2019s other feel-good celebrity love story, between Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson, may not have been worth celebrating, or believing at all. The latest scuttlebutt is that Neeson and Anderson were only pretending to be in a relationship to promote their movie The Naked Gun<\/em><\/a>. Now I\u2019m wondering how I could have been so gullible and asking celebrities to kindly either knock it off with the fake romances or to do a better job and trick me more thoroughly. Because this half-assed fauxmance act is not serving any of us well.<\/p>\n But before we get into that, let\u2019s review: In July, as 73-year-old Neeson and 58-year-old Anderson were making the publicity rounds to promote their movie, outlets like People<\/a>, Page Six<\/a>, and others broke the \u201cnews\u201d that they were dating. Re-examining those articles now, it\u2019s true that the actors themselves never confirmed it, but even so, it would have been easy for someone who was only sort of paying attention to get the impression that they were officially and unambiguously a couple: They smooched on the Today<\/em> show<\/a>! There were headlines about how they\u2019re \u201cmadly in love<\/a>!\u201d When Andy Cohen gushed about their relationship to Anderson and Neeson on Watch What Happens Live<\/em><\/a>, they had every opportunity to refute him, but instead they giggled and went along with it.<\/p>\n Whatever they were doing, it worked: People seemed genuinely moved by and taken with them as a couple<\/a>, especially older people, who finally had a romance to root for between stars they could actually name, stars whom they\u2019d watched age and go through their share of ups and downs\u2014Neeson tragically lost his wife, Natasha Richardson, in 2009, and Anderson has been through several divorces. But over the past few weeks, seeds of doubt have emerged: After the Hollywood Reporter published an article with the headline \u201cAre Pam and Liam for Real? Or Is This Another Hollywood Fauxmance?<\/a>,\u201d this week a reporter who runs a Substack focused on celebrity gossip<\/a> ran a story quoting an \u201canonymous insider\u201d who said \u201cthere was never a relationship to begin with\u201d and that it was all just \u201cclever marketing.\u201d There\u2019s reason to take this reporting with a grain of salt\u2014it\u2019s based on an anonymous source and hasn\u2019t been substantiated\u2014but looking back on their press tour, it\u2019s clear that the supposed couple neither confirmed nor denied their romance, and in fact their What What Happens Live<\/em> appearance makes a lot more sense in that context.<\/p>\n