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Addressing the Phillip Schofield scandal for the first time publicly, the presenter spoke almost exclusively in platitudes – and gave everyone fuel for yet more speculation
June 5, 2023 3:00 pm(Updated 3:01 pm)
Along with Ukraine launching a major counteroffensive against Russia, the story of the day is that a TV presenter has done some presenting. Holly Willoughby returned to This Morning today and made her first public comment on the Phillip Schofield scandal – and judging by the level of media anticipation, it might as well have been a prime minister’s resignation speech.
Multiple news websites, including the BBC and Manchester Evening News, ran liveblogs in the run-up to 10am, when This Morning began on ITV and Willoughby opened, in a pure, angelic white dress, with her statement about Schofield. As overblown as this undoubtedly is, thousands of people across the country were waiting to hear what Willoughby would say, after she has been absent from the show for two weeks, during which time Schofield has resigned, and told the BBC’s Amol Rajan that the situation had caused him to feel suicidal.
This is a PR nightmare for Willoughby, who was working at This Morning at the time of the affair, and who was instrumental in Schofield’s coming out in 2020. Rumours of a “feud” between the previously untouchable presenting duo have been bubbling for months; it seems that when the Schofield story was about to break, she distanced herself to save her own career. Since the beginning of this saga a few weeks ago, then, it’s been plain that Willoughby would return to the show and that her return was mutually exclusive with a good relationship with Schofield. So what did people really want from her today?
They hoped, perhaps, she would either shed new light on the existing situation or simply create a new situation. If it were the former, she might be explicit about what had happened with Schofield, tell us whether she knew all along, tell us how she felt. Alternatively, she might have broken down, or been so cool and collected that she seemed like a clear villain, giving people a new story to jump on. Already, rumours about her own career – that she may have been poached by the BBC, for instance – are eclipsing the original facts of the Schofield situation. There’s a lot at stake for her as a presenter whose image has always been that of a squeaky-clean sweetheart – perhaps her statement would offer insight into her own struggle, too.
But Willoughby is too much of a pro to provide anything of the sort. What she said was ultimately predictable and inconsequential. After a deep breath and some comfort from new co-presenter Josie Gibson, she opened by asking “are you ok?” – a deflection of attention from her onto us. She followed by saying that Schofield had not told the truth, that she felt “shaken, troubled, let down”, and that she hoped the show would get back to a place of “warmth and magic”.
People are enraged. While some This Morning viewers have praised Willoughby and the show on social media for “getting on with things”, the statement has been dismissed by others as insincere and hollow, with many people claiming that Willoughby is “throwing [Schofield] under the bus” and faking her concern for him. Which shows that it wasn’t so much about what Willoughby said per se, but whether she was being honest.
Willoughby’s alleged insincerity is closely linked to the stiff-upper-lip stoicism that Britain, as a nation, prizes. She delivered her statement with just enough emotion but ultimately keeping that TV smile spread across her face even as she welled up. Although increasingly the received wisdom is that we should all be expressing our feelings constantly, Willoughby’s brave face reminded us that this is only within other strict parameters.
Because if she had expressed her true feelings, what might have happened? We might have got “the truth”, yes, as many people are calling for – but we might also have got too much truth. We might have got screams, tears, punched camera lenses, swearing, shouting. We might have got more information that – shock horror – further plunged the comfort blanket of the nation’s favourite daytime TV show into scandal. We might also have got homophobia or an invasion of the younger colleague’s privacy.
Really, nobody wants “the truth”. They are thrilled by disguised drama, subtext and lying, because it gives more to speculate about, and therefore more to sustain this seemingly never-ending non-story. Willoughby’s statement was clearly carefully engineered to cover ITV’s legal bases and to save her own skin – what more did anyone expect? More importantly, what more did anyone want? At least now there’s even more for This Morning viewers to theorise about.
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