BANGKOK – In what entertainment writers and experts are calling a “desperate but savvy” move, retired tennis player Paradorn Srichipan and his wife, former Miss Universe Natalie Glebova, have launched a high-profile divorce campaign.
The Divorce, as it has been called in distributed press releases, aims to place Paradorn and Natalie back in the celebrity spotlight one last time with what the couple are hoping will be a nasty, gossip-filled, talk-of-the-town story.
Along with a televised press conference where the couple admitted baitingly to “irreconcilable differences,” rumors have been planted among Thailand’s celebrity columnists of lurid tales of Paradorn’s infidelity. Additionally, Paradorn’s father has made insightful comments about the couple getting married too young, in the hopes of stimulating condescending social commentary from Bangkok’s conservative cultural talking heads.
“The Divorce could have legs,” said Thawanee Suponkol, a celebrity and entertainment writer at Thai Rath. “Unlike their previous campaign The Retirement, this one has many angles that can generate debate.”
Thawanee doubts, however, that The Divorce will prove the biggest celebrity story of the last few years. “They’ll never take the title from Annie and Film,” she said. “That one had a baby, paternity issues, extortion rumors, and the element of surprise. The Divorce, while juicy, lacks all those elements.”
Nevertheless, the campaign may prove to be the biggest lift to Paradorn and Natalie’s careers since their wedding, which was followed by a series of failed attempts at celebrity relevance, including a disastrous appearance by Natalie on AXN’s “The Amazing Race Asia” in which she gave up on a Road Block and wept when she had to sleep in an airport.
Many analysts, however, believe that the couple simply never had the right formula from the beginning.
“Natalie was a beauty queen, which is a one-hit wonder celebrity career, unlike, say, an actress or singer,” said Channel 3 entertainment reporter Tukkawon Wongsawat. “And Paradorn’s sports career was pretty much over by 2004 due to so-called injuries. They never had much going for them after that, so it’s no surprise they had to go negative.”
Although ugly divorces are generally guaranteed headline-generators, the negative strategy is tricky, notes Tukkawon, because it generally requires ambiguous hero/villain figures to divide audiences.
“Paradorn is generally viewed as a rich Lamborghini-driving playboy who whored himself to sponsors and lacked the heart for real tennis achievement, while Natalie is viewed as a superficial expat who quit on her partner without remorse. So there’s no one to take sides with. They’re both awful.”
