NY Magazine has an interview with Rob Shuter, a former celebrity publicist and media strategist for people like Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Simpson and more. This interview has so many interesting pieces of information, it’s kind of crazy. The first part – which CB referenced in a Batfleck story earlier – is Shuter explaining what Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner’s media strategy is and how both of them are working the press. Then he spills some tea on J.Lo, Jessica Simpson and more.

When J.Lo & Ben Affleck broke up: “I probably can’t give you specifics about Jennifer, but I can say that when she broke up with Ben, it was carefully thought through. Not the breakup — they make the decisions by themselves. We’re not their marriage counselors. I’m not her friend, I’m not even her hairdresser. Publicists who think they’re friends with celebrities make a terrible mistake. We’re paid professionals who handle getting messages out.

Jennifer Lopez repeats lovers, so she might repeat something with Affleck: “Jennifer, historically, has had a pattern of going back to past romances. She dated Marc, she broke up with him, she fell head over heels with Ben Affleck, and then when they broke up, she ran back to the arms of Marc, and within months they’re married. Would it surprise me if they talk to each other? They’ve got each other’s emails and phone numbers. Would it surprise me if someone reached out, in the same way that regular people do? I’d send a text or an email saying, “Gosh, I read in the newspaper, I’m pretty sorry.” I think Jennifer will be fascinating to watch, because clearly she’s still with Casper Smart. But if there was a photograph of Jen and Ben together, that just happened to hit the same weekend that his movie came out? I think the paparazzi would explode. They were a gorgeous couple who played into the attention. They gave us a lot of access to photograph them. When he was on a boat, rubbing cream on her fantastic bottom? That’s why those two exploded in the press.

Staging photos: “If you have a reality star who enjoys attention, you handle it very differently. You’ll stage photo ops. You’ll stage the paparazzi when they’re walking down the street looking very sad, wearing black. Even Princess Diana was not above this. She went to the most romantic building in the world, the Taj Mahal, and cried on a bench by herself in front of the press.

Publicists tell the paps where to be: “It’s totally overt, to the point where you tell them the time to be there. “She’ll be in Central Park, wearing black, sitting on a bench, and she’ll be there for ten minutes. Fine, see you at 12:01.”

On John Mayer: “I think we’ve learned now that nobody likes the press as much as John Mayer does. The only time we ever got to see Jennifer Aniston out was when she was dating him, and he used to march her from La Esquina to his apartment, and that was for blocks. That girl never, ever gave photographs, and suddenly there’s literally a marching press corps that’s following her down the street.

[From NY Magazine]

There’s so much more, and I’m also enjoying his thoughts about the Kardashians and Taylor Swift and the fading exclusivity of celebrity too, but I might save those comments for another post. The stuff about Aniston is especially interesting to me because I remember exactly how strangely public that relationship with John Mayer was. It was 2008 and Angelina Jolie was pregnant again (with twins) and it felt like Aniston was going a little bit crazy trying to compete for attention. But Shuter makes it sound like it was mostly on Mayer, that he was pursuing the limelight and strutting Aniston around. Hm. As for the J.Lo and Affleck thing – I think he’s right in that Jennifer Lopez would be “up” for going back to Affleck, but I don’t see him being up for it.

Photos courtesy of Getty, WENN.