Here’s what most people don’t understand about press tours: they are not interviews. They are industrial operations. A star promoting a film will sit through dozens — sometimes hundreds — of near-identical interviews in a matter of days, armed with media training, approved talking points, and a publicist hovering just off camera. The entire machine exists to produce one thing: controlled, on-message, boring content.
Which is exactly why the moments when the machine breaks down are so good. These are the unscripted seconds that no publicist approved and no training could prevent — and they’ve become more famous than most of the movies they were promoting. I’ve verified the details on each of these, because the internet loves to misquote celebrities, and a funny story told wrong stops being funny.
The eight funniest press tour moments ever, and what they reveal about the machine.
Table of Contents
- Why Press Tours Produce the Best Chaos (The Machine, Explained)
- 1. Tom Holland vs. the Spoiler (Avengers: Infinity War Tour)
- 2. Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, and Alison Hammond (Blade Runner 2049)
- 3. Jennifer Lawrence’s Hunger Games Confessional
- 4. “ISTG Means Instagram” — Luke Thompson’s Bridgerton Moment
- 5. The Savage Clapbacks: Scarlett Johansson’s “Rabbit Food”
- 6. Woody Harrelson Meets the Hemsworths (Twice)
- 7. Ryan Reynolds’ Sarcasm vs. Everybody
- 8. Benedict Cumberbatch’s On-Duty Defense of Keira Knightley
- Why These Moments Matter More Than the Movies
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Press Tours Produce the Best Chaos (The Machine, Explained)
A press tour is a grueling circuit: morning shows, junkets, red carpets, podcasts, TikToks — often 8 to 12 hours a day of answering variations of “so tell us about your character.” Jet-lagged, over-caffeinated, repeating the same anecdotes for the fiftieth time.
Media trainers teach celebrities to “bridge” — pivot any question back to approved talking points. But exhaustion, a chaotic interviewer, or an unexpected question can crack the facade, and the contrast between the polished machine and the unguarded human is the funniest thing in entertainment.
Now, the moments.
1. Tom Holland vs. the Spoiler (Avengers: Infinity War Tour)
Tom Holland cannot keep a secret, and Marvel knew it. During the Avengers: Infinity War press tour, the studio took the extraordinary step of assigning Benedict Cumberbatch as Holland’s unofficial on-set minder — his job was literally to stop Holland from spoiling the film.
It didn’t always work: Holland once began “at the end, everybody dies—” before Cumberbatch cut him off with a sharp “Dude!” The gag became so beloved that Marvel incorporated it into promotional material.
What makes it work: it’s the machine failing in real time, with the machine’s own designated fixer sitting right there failing to fix it. You can’t script that — which is why Marvel eventually stopped trying to prevent it and started monetizing it.
2. Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, and Alison Hammond (Blade Runner 2049)
British presenter Alison Hammond’s opening is chaotic — high energy, slightly unhinged, completely unlike the deferential junket interviews these two are used to. Within seconds, both are laughing. They never recover.
What follows is several minutes of two of Hollywood’s most controlled actors completely losing composure — Gosling in particular, reduced to helpless laughter at moments that aren’t even that funny, which somehow makes it funnier. Ford, famously gruff in interviews, is grinning like a kid.
Why it’s beloved: junket interviews are usually so polished they’re unwatchable. Watching two professionals fail at answering questions is cathartic — and Hammond didn’t ask better questions, she just refused to be boring.
3. Jennifer Lawrence’s Hunger Games Confessional
During the Catching Fire press tour, Jennifer Lawrence — seated among her castmates at a press conference — suddenly blurted out that she was “so hungry,” launching into an unfiltered riff about craving a Philly cheesesteak. The room erupted. Lawrence looked faintly mortified and kept going anyway.
This was peak J-Law era — the anti-celebrity brand of tripping on stairs and saying the unpolished thing. The hunger moment fit perfectly, maybe too perfectly.
Genuine or genius branding, it worked because it gave the audience something the machine never provides — a celebrity behaving like a person instead of a product. The hunger was relatable. The cheesesteak was extremely relatable.
4. “ISTG Means Instagram” — Luke Thompson’s Bridgerton Moment
The most recent entry on this list, and proof the genre is alive and well. During the Bridgerton season four press tour, Luke Thompson (Benedict Bridgerton) read a fan comment aloud: “She’s so ethereal ISTG.” He had no idea what ISTG meant. He mispronounced it. Then, at a later junket, he confidently declared it stood for “Instagram.”
It stands for “I swear to God.”
His co-star Yerin Ha’s reaction — the particular joy of watching someone be wrong with total confidence — is what made the clip explode.
It’s the inverse of the usual dynamic: here the celebrity is the fish out of water and the internet is in on the joke.
5. The Savage Clapbacks: Scarlett Johansson’s “Rabbit Food”
Some of the funniest press tour moments aren’t accidents — they’re counterattacks. During the Avengers: Infinity War tour, Scarlett Johansson was asked yet another question about her diet and training regimen — the kind of question her male co-stars never get. Her response: “How come you get the really interesting, existential questions and I get the ‘rabbit food’ questions?”
It’s funny because it’s true, and devastating because it’s true. The same tour produced Jonah Hill’s “do you have any other questions… that are smart?” and Rihanna’s withering “how disappointing was that question?”
These moments endure because they’re the rare occasions the power dynamic flips — when the person supposed to sit there and smile decides, for three seconds, not to.
6. Woody Harrelson Meets the Hemsworths (Twice)
During The Hunger Games press tour, Woody Harrelson admitted — on camera — that he’d filmed an entire movie with Chris and Liam Hemsworth without realizing they were brothers. He’d just thought they were two guys who looked alike.
Let that sink in. Months of filming. Same cast. Never connected the dots.
It’s the kind of confession that would be embarrassing if it weren’t so charming — Harrelson’s delivery, utterly unbothered and faintly proud of his own obliviousness, is what makes it immortal.
7. Ryan Reynolds’ Sarcasm vs. Everybody
Ryan Reynolds has turned the press tour into a performance art — not by breaking character, but by making his character the guy who treats the entire apparatus with open sarcasm. Promoting Deadpool films alongside co-stars, Reynolds deploys a constant stream of deadpan barbs, fake feuds, and transparently insincere praise that leaves interviewers unsure whether they’re in on the joke.
The genius: media training inverted. Instead of bridging back to talking points, Reynolds bridges away from sincerity entirely — and it works better than sincerity would.
It’s proof the smartest response to the press tour machine isn’t to fight it or submit to it — it’s to become a better show than the movie you’re promoting.
8. Benedict Cumberbatch’s On-Duty Defense of Keira Knightley
During The Imitation Game press tour, an interviewer told Keira Knightley she looked “a bit worn out.” Before she could respond, Cumberbatch interjected: “That’s not a very nice thing to say to one of the most beautiful women on the planet.” Knightley, without missing a beat: “Yeah, get lost!”
It’s barely ten seconds, but it’s perfect: the gallantry is genuine, the timing impeccable, and Knightley’s “get lost” lands like a punchline she’d been saving.
It captures the foxhole camaraderie co-stars develop surviving the circuit together — the best moments come from that bond, not any individual performance.
Why These Moments Matter More Than the Movies
Here’s the uncomfortable truth for the studios spending nine figures on these films: most of these clips have been watched more times than the movies they were promoting. The press tour blooper reel outlives the press tour.
The machine is designed to produce controlled, forgettable content; the moments are what people actually want — humans being human under pressure.
The funniest press tour moments aren’t just funny. They’re the cracks where the light gets in — proof that no amount of training can fully suppress personality.
If you want more of this world, our collection of the best celebrity interviews has the all-time greats — and for the full picture of how the sausage gets made, here’s how press junkets actually work behind the scenes.
Frequently Asked Questions
A press tour is a promotional circuit where a film’s stars do dozens or hundreds of interviews — talk shows, junkets, podcasts, red carpets — in a compressed period before release. Days run 8–12 hours of near-identical questions, which is why unscripted moments happen.
Holland has a well-documented habit of revealing plot details in interviews, starting around the Avengers: Infinity War press tour. Marvel once assigned Benedict Cumberbatch to supervise him in interviews. The studio has since leaned into it as part of his public persona.
Hammond opened her Blade Runner 2049 interview with Gosling and Harrison Ford in her signature chaotic style — both dissolved into laughter within seconds and never recovered.
Subjective, but the most-cited contenders include Gosling and Ford’s Alison Hammond interview, Tom Holland’s spoiler moments, and Jennifer Lawrence’s unfiltered Hunger Games press tour. The common thread: the polished PR machine breaking down in real time.
Yes. Media trainers teach celebrities “bridging” — pivoting difficult or off-topic questions back to approved talking points — plus techniques for handling invasive, repetitive, or hostile questions. The funniest moments happen when training meets exhaustion or genuine surprise.
Ryan Reynolds for turning press tours into comedy performances; Tom Holland for accidental chaos. Gosling’s interview appearances are legendary too.
