202: Can Ezra Miller's Public Apology Save The Flash Movie?

Movie actor Ezra Miller recently issued an apology published as an exclusive in Variety magazine for a series of legal issues and assault and abuse allegations. This is never good, with the Flash set to open in theaters next summer and from quoting the article, reportedly serving as a key entry in the studio's DC Comics films, featuring appearances by Ben Affleck, one of the people who appears in this podcast often, and Michael Keaton as Ben Batman. There's a lot riding on the apology. Lots and lots of money. Welcome to the Indestructible PR podcast, where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation in order to have an effective crisis response. For a public brand like a superhero franchise or or one of its actors, it helps to understand exactly what the public needs. It needs an effective response. What you say and what you do matters. So when you need to respond to that crisis, it has to be precision, like in its delivery on the episode. This week, let's discuss the elements of the perfect public apology by analyzing the Ezra Method Miller apology all in a Flash. The headline reads, the Flash star Ezra Miller seeking treatment for complex mental health issues. A statement came out a week ago after the actor was charged with felony burglary in Stanford, Vermont. I was going to say Connecticut there. So the actor has had a bad run lately, which is unfortunate for Warner Brothers, who's distributing the movie the Flash. Now, the movie is coming out next summer, but the crisis is happening now. So what we're going to do in this episode is just analyze the statement, see if it works, see if this apology, which is exactly what it is for what Ezra Miller has been going through, if it follows a framework that I use and I see in the perfect apologies that are out there, if it fails, then that might be, I don't know, a good indicator that Warner Brothers may have some more trouble on its hands. Now to go back to Miller, Ezra Miller. I'm going to admit right up front, my fandom for DC Comics, Marvel, all of it peaked at around 8, when Molly would sit down with her serial of Quisp, King, Vitamin, Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Booberry, in that order. Watching, you know, the hall of Justice, Justice League, that was my peak fandom. When Star wars came out with Tobey Maguire, I was interested then. But just to give you perspective on where I come in as a fan, I. I've been lost in it. I cannot claim to be a super fan when it comes to these movies. I was watching it in the early Spider Mansion, they hooked me. Robert Downey Junior's Iron Man. Like, okay, all right, I'm there. But I think I'm just past the age. I definitely have kids who are into it. My daughter Quinn is, you know, maybe I can't even give her that. Maybe she was. I don't even know if they're super fans. But I do know I do have people my age. I was with one last night. Or not last night, that sounds bad. Last week, someone who was visiting. Someone who's been on this podcast, by the way, who was visiting my neck of the woods. And they were discussing their fandom on this. But back to Ezra. I just wanted to give a little situational awareness that I am not as versed in the culture that is the superhero fandom, but I am versed in the response. And on TikTok, I recently posted my TikTok asking, you know, what is the perfect apology? You know, what's the formula for it? So somebody asked in the reply, you know, what do you think of Ezra Miller? So I'm just going to do a two for here. I'm doing the podcast and I'm going to hop on TikTok and do the response there as well. All while I wait for a nor' easter that is swirling around every town I have except mine. No rain. My poor lawn is so dry. And I keep just watching for the storm to come. Everyone around me is drenched except for me, but here we go. Maybe it's a superhero. I don't know. Someone is blocking me. Like Wonder Woman, you know? No, no, no, no. That's. No. Now I'm drifting. I'm thinking of the cone of silence. I'm going in to get smart. This is bad. I. My Gen X brain is so confused. All right, back to Ezra Miller. Okay, so just to touch on a little bit of the history of what happened with Ezra Miller. So he was. Recently I mentioned he was charged with felony burglary in Vermont, and that was an incident involving stolen alcohol from a private residence. He was also. Or they. Excuse me, they identify as they was accused of several assaults in Hawaii, including grooming of a minor. That's getting into Kevin Spacey territory and supposedly harboring a woman and her three children. The children were also a part of. There were some issues with a lot of drug paraphernalia, drug use with these kids. So in other words, it's not the type of rap sheet that you want swirling around the release of a movie. So the question is, will this Flash movie have problems because of the actor. According to Hollywood Reporter. I had read an article that mentioned there was a source with knowledge of the situation at the studio. What Warner Brothers was deciding to do do with the issue with Miller. So apparently there were three choices. One, Warner Brothers said that they might have Miller do limited press for the Flash. Now that would be the same playbook that the producers behind west side Story, Steven Spielberg's movie with Ansel Elgor, he was dealing with sexual assault allegations and they did the same thing with him. That movie came out at the beginning of 2022 and instead of scrapping the movie, instead of pulling him from the movie, they just limited his press and they really had to limit a lot of the actors press and what they could and could not talk about. And the second scenario was if Miller didn't reach out for help, Warner Brothers could still release the film but not play a prominent role in the marketing and publicity again which was similar to west side Story. And after that Miller would not be the Flash moving forward. And then the third situation would be if Miller's behavior deteriorated even further and that they would just kill the movie outright. Similar what they did to Batgirl and not because of the actress with Batgirls. They just felt that it wasn't going to make a return. So apparently they just scrapped the whole movie I read for and then just used it as a tax write off. But anyway, those were the three choices that needed to be made. And here's an interesting point about, you know, crisis communication right now. And I'm in the middle mix of it, the thick of it, because I'm finishing up a crisis plan. I'm updating a crisis plan for I think 2023 and it's bringing in the elements. You know, typically if you have a crisis plan or you know, in your organization or you've seen one, it's like a book in a folder and it's on a shelf and it gives you like a planning. It's either a seven step plan or a nine step plan. And it starts with picking your team. Who's the team leader? Who are our stakeholders? What is our first statement? This is our response. You go through it. But now that plan doesn't work without incorporating this online blowback and pushback. So these plans, at least the one that I'm creating right now, has to have contingencies in there when you need to take responsibility for a crisis and understanding that responsibility is like a consequence of something that's at risk, which is trust. So trust is now this word. It's like this lodestar of a crisis. You have to determine, do we have it or are we in danger of losing it, or have we lost it? So when trust is at risk, you need to determine what you need to do. And determining what you need to do comes down to choices. So just like Warner Brothers had to decide, what are our choices with this actor if they proceed to deteriorate in behavior? We have to make some serious choices here. And that's what crisis management is all about. All right, so let's look at the statement that Ezra Miller, Ezra Miller's handlers put together, probably Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers hired someone they put together and determined what type of apology Ezra Miller needed to deliver. So before I play the apology, I'm going to play it. I'm just going to play it from a news clip because the delivery is coming out pitch perfect. There are five elements that we're going to look for in the perfect apology. And these elements are kind of woven into my indestructible PR response, which is own it, explain it, promise it. That's the easiest way to remember it. I always like back pocket messaging. You know, something that you can just pull off the top of your head, right? Just the first step, just own it. Explain what you're owning, and then what promise are you making as you move forward? But as you write a response, we can just add more layers, more elements, more detailed elements to the perfect apology. So here are the elements that we're looking for. The first one is the own it, which is acknowledging what happens, okay? That's where you express awareness of the event or the issue. You're acknowledging something happened. You are not glossing over it. You're stating what happened. And the next step is you want to then express sympathy, express knowledge that there are people who you let down, there are people who were hurt, there were victims. So if it's a person like Ezra Miller, you've let down fans, you've let down the studio. If it's a company, an organization, you've maybe let down your customers. You know, who are the victims in all of this? Okay? And then the next stage of it. And so those two are the own it piece. You know, you acknowledge what happened and you own up to it. That's owning up that people were hurt by this. The next piece are the values. This is what you're expressing, what you care about, where you come from. Safety is always our first priority. Our customers are our first priority. Whatever. Just what are your values? As a so and so, I would never do this, you know, whatever the next step is. Okay, what's next? This is the. Explain it. What are we going to do about it? Okay, what is the approach? What are the actions? This is step by step what I'm going to do next. And that leads to number five, which is promise it, and that is the commitment. What commitment are you making here? What is your promise that you are going to deliver on? That last line gets you out of the crisis. The first line of owning it is, sets the stage for you to get out of it. If you miss the first one, then you can't get that last gate. So let's now take a listen to the statement that was published in Variety coming from Ezra Miller or their handlers. Take a listen.

Ezra Miller recently issued an apology for all the indiscretions as of late in a statement provided to Variety. Now, in it, the actor said, quote, having recently gone through a time of intense crisis, I now understand that I am suffering complex mental health issues and have begun ongoing treatment. I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior. I am committed to doing the necessary work to get back to a healthy, safe, and productive stage in my life.

Did the apology do its job? So since you're listening to the podcast and you're not writing it down, but maybe, maybe some of you did, and if you did, good on you. But let's go through the steps. Let's see if we covered it. Okay. Number one was acknowledge. Did Miller acknowledge what had happened? The line was having recently gone through a time of intense crisis. Let's give it a sliding scale here. Let's go on a scale of 10. 1 to 10, 10 being fully acknowledged, 1 being not so much. So that's going to be our rating scale. Having recently gone through a time of intense crisis, we're going to give that a 4. I'm not even going to give it a 4. 5. A 10 would be, you know, explaining more what was happening. Intense crisis is a euphemism. We don't like euphemisms in our statements. I'm bringing it down to three. Just for that. We want to be as specific as possible. Now, understanding here's. I'm going to add a caveat here. If there are legal issues, we can't be too explicit and detailed because there could be pending charges there. So it's a little understandable. So that's why we'll set it at 4. But you can go a little bit deeper here without getting into legal issues there. Number two, are we showing empathy for what you are apologizing for? Miller said, I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior. That was an empathetic statement. It was written as an empathetic statement. And the word apology was there. Not sorry. Because sorry does not have the same amount of weight to it that apologize does. I would like to, you know, sincerely apologize. I can't apologize enough. Okay, so then to everyone I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior. So again, we're getting into the euphemism territory. We're just alarmed and upset with behavior. What is that behavior? We don't know. He hasn't committed any crime. Anyone reading this statement? No crime has been committed. They haven't done anything wrong. The past behavior could be liking the New York Yankees at this point. Right? Like, we don't know what this behavior is and how egregious it is. Last Friday and Sunday against the Red Sox. That's all I have to say. Yankee fans. So again, let's just give it a four. Number three. Now we're getting into the values. This is what you express, what you care about. Not really. We didn't get that line there. But four and five. So what is our approach? What are we going to do about it? Okay. What is our promise? It our commitment? Miller says, I'm committed to doing the necessary work to get back to a healthy, safe and productive stage in my life. Huh. We have the word committed in there. Close. So I'm going to give that a 4, too. So now we have a mean. Or is it a mode? Or is it a median? Or is it all of the above? A4. Not great. Not great. Does it do the job? Yeah, maybe it's done the job. For what Warner Brothers was trying to achieve, they needed a statement of regret. They needed a statement of atonement. They needed an apology. They got one. They got it in August of 2022. That gives them time before this movie comes out. I'm putting myself in the shoes as the crisis person working for Warner Brothers. Ezra, hopefully, is in some form of rehabilitation. Ezra Miller is getting help in some form. We don't know what it is, and we don't have to know. We don't have to. But hopefully that's what's taking place. Clean up the behavior, clean up the actions, clean up the addictions, whatever they're dealing with there. Take care of the legal issues. When Ezra Miller comes out the other side, we're going to hear the story of what happened these past few months. How the restorative process for Miller in time for the movie to come out. Now, it's interesting, you know, this movie, if Ben Affleck is in this movie, you know, another guy who's had a tough road. But Ben Affleck really hasn't had to apologize for behavior. You know, what he's done wrong. I mean, he dealt with that glitch with what it appeared like he was speaking ill of his former wife, Jennifer Garner, who everyone loves on the Howard Stern Show. But he still has, you know, the people on his side, people still like Ben Affleck. And look at downey, Robert downey Jr. I mean, his career, he was able to rehabilitate, reignite his career. And he had a huge fall from grace. He was arrested. You know, he had stints in jail. He went into a drug rehabilitation program. So there you go. So the playbook is there. That is an Iron man approach. So maybe that's what's happening here with Ezra Miller. They're taking a Robert Downey Jr. Approach, but not doing it very quickly. Ironically, for the Flash. They're just going to drip it out. So in every podcast, I include an indestructible PR tip. This is the one tip. It's a leave behind an easy to remember tip to help you build an indestructible reputation. You have to remember when a person is going through a crisis. Maybe you're going through a crisis on your scale of your business, in your reputation, when you're going through it. You just have to remember that reputations are one or lost in a crisis. They really are. That's what's at risk. Sometimes what's leading it is legal issues. Can I just get through the legal issues to get on the other side? But many times it's reputational and the impact of the reputation can be costly because it can cost you your business. That's all for this week on the podcast. I hope you continue to enjoy your summer for people in North America. I know I'm going to. That's all for this week. See you again next week. Bye for now.