Kidman drama continues
Why someone planted a false story on a Web site linking Nicole Kidman to Buffalo’s Studio Arena Theatre campaign for survival, and who that person is, remains a mystery today — a day after Kidman denied making the comments.
A publicist for Kidman confirmed Tuesday that an online report that the actress was championing the cause of the local theater was entirely fabricated.
In an e-mail sent Tuesday, Alicia Mohr of the Los Angeles-based agency PMK/HPH, which represents Kidman,
wrote: “She’s not even familiar with the theater, nor has she [spoken] to any press in England. She only got there [Monday.] The comments attributed to Nicole must have come from someone else.”
That “someone else,” according to Hossam Abdel-Kader, CEO of the Vienna-based Web site PR-inside.com, where the bogus report originally appeared, is an unidentified person who has created seven separate accounts on the site. After receiving a complaint pointing to Tuesday’s story in The News, Abdel-Kader took the report down.
An outraged Kathleen Gaffney, Studio Arena’s artistic director and CEO, said she feels the report was “intended to embarrass” her struggling theater and that she has enlisted an unnamed expert to search out the person responsible for posting the report.
“When all is said and done, we only have our word,” Gaffney said, referring to swirling rumors that someone from Studio Arena itself was responsible for posting the report in order to raise the theater’s sinking profile and give it a fundraising boost.
Audre Bunis, a member of the theater’s board, in a phone call to The News, tried to dispel the notion that anyone associated with Studio Arena posted the fake report.
“This is something that is terribly embarrassing, even though we had nothing to do with it,“ Bunis said. “I just don’t want this theater to go down. I really, really don’t. To be so close and to think that this was such a kick in the pants for a lot of people who were excited about it, as well as we were.” Gaffney’s assurance Sunday that the report was “the real deal” quickly turned to frenzied incredulity Monday when she learned of the report’s various inconsistencies.
“With persistence,” Gaffney wrote Tuesday, “we’ll find out who did this, and I will make it known.”
