Jolie-Pitt PR Teams, Ripp Media, Havas New York, and Sunshine Sachs

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Hired PR Experts for Divorce-Related Communications

Both actors are big name draws, and both have recently retained crisis communications pros.

Jolie’s team consists of Laura Wasser (attorney for Johnny Depp and Jennifer Garner) and two publicists based in the U.K., presumably because she has publicly stated that she wants to raise her family in England. The two U.K. publicists, Arminka Helic and Chloe Dalton, are also long-time associates of Jolie.

Pitt’s team consists of family law attorney Lawrence Spiegel and PR crisis communications expert Matthew Hiltzik, CEO of Hiltzik Strategies.

Bill Cosby Adds Ripp Media to His PR team in Defamation Case

A 2006 civil lawsuit against Cosby filed by Andrea Constand and others was closed with a confidential settlement agreement, and all documents related to the case became part of that agreement. In 2015, Constand requested for the court to unseal the records and release her and other plaintiffs from the agreement. Coincidentally, the same day the 2015 request was filed with the court, Constand began interviews with members of the media revealing details. Ten days later, everything from the 2006 case was leaked.

Now Cosby, represented by Ripp Media, demands those charges be dismissed since, in 2006, the Montgomery County (PA) D.A.’s office promised not to prosecute Cosby saying there was not enough definitive evidence to prove the case. Guess what, that D.A.’s office has opened up a criminal investigation on the matter. But Ripp Media (and Cosby) claim the release of those confidential documents, and the media’s misrepresentation of their contents, has defamed his character and unfairly prejudiced any case against him.

Havas New York Adds Diana Vienne to Group

Diana Vienne, the former chief talent officer at Marina Maher Communications, started at Havas New York’s (HNY) headquarters a few weeks ago managing HNY’s corporate culture. She is also in charge of management functions and acquisition of talent. Other companies she’s worked for include PricewaterhouseCoopers as a principal consultant, Ketchum as SVP, Deloitte Consulting as senior manager, and the principal of her own firm Vienne Consulting.

Are Affleck’s PR Reps Censoring Comments from Him?

The simple answer is yes, but the comprehensive one is that the senior publicist assigned to Affleck from Sunshine Sachs agency was sick the day it happened and a couple of junior staffers felt the need to edit comments the actor made during an interview. Unfortunately, as they were doing so, KTLA reporter Sam Rubin was at the time conducting another interview with Affleck. Rubin happened to be the one who discovered Affleck’s request last year, made to PBS’s “Finding Your Roots,” to edit out his family’s history of slave ownership.

Of the current incident, Rubin said: “I spoke at length with Ben Affleck’s personal publicist [from Sunshine Sachs], who was very polite and very apologetic. She was not in the room when all of this went down, She, in fact, was ill that day, and had junior staffers work the junket. She assured me that had she been there, this would not have taken pace, and I believe her.”