The real reason it's so hard for people to believe Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet are in love

Despite nearly two years of sightings, smooches, and soft launches, Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet's relationship still feels like a glitch in the Hollywood matrix.

Even when the couple made their long-awaited red carpet debut last week after several PDA-filled public outings, some still struggled to accept the news.

"I still can't believe kylie & timothee is a real thing," one person wrote on X.

Jenner and Chalamet's relationship has been defined by skepticism since rumors of their pairing first surfaced in 2023. Social media users wondered what these two stars — one who rose to fame on a gaudy reality show, the other in the world of Oscar-worthy cinema — could possibly have in common.

"I firmly believe they sit together in complete silence," one person wrote on X. Such reactions to Jenner and Chalamet are not confined to social media's most hyperactive posters; I've heard them firsthand. A friend of mine recently said she couldn't shake the feeling that Jenner and Chalamet "don't exist in the same celebrity timeline."

Conventional wisdom suggests a relationship this puzzling could be bad business for both parties. But it turns out that confusing the pop-culture-following public may actually be a smart strategy.

Two public relations experts told Business Insider the stream of confused responses to this celebrity coupling represents a job well done by Jenner and Chalamet's respective PR teams.

It's a sign that both of their carefully cultivated individual brands are strong. So if you feel the friction from those brands clashing, you're not alone — that's precisely what makes the couple so fun to doubt.

A tale of 2 very different celebrities

Evan Nierman, the CEO of the crisis PR firm Red Banyan, described Jenner's brand as ultravisible, social media-heavy, and incessantly self-promotional. Meanwhile, Chalamet has made a point of pitching himself as an artist with discernment and taste.

"The problem that people are having is those two different personas seem at odds with one another," Nierman said. "The kind of brooding, superserious, superauthentic actor clashes with the Kardashian model, and I think that's probably why people are having such a hard time understanding the pairing of the two of them."

In reality, the public's reaction to Jenner and Chalamet as a couple has nothing to do with their personalities or compatibility behind closed doors. It has everything to do with brand positioning and integration strategies, likely orchestrated — or, at the very least, closely monitored — by large teams of publicists, image consultants, and managers (in Jenner's case, a "momager").

"PR can play a much bigger role in the things that you see coming out of Hollywood than most people at home would guess," Mike Fahey, the founder and CEO of the PR agency Fahey Communications, told BI. "A lot of those things that seem like happy accidents are actually by design."

But there's an important distinction between our traditional understanding of a "PR relationship," one that's been orchestrated by celebrities' respective teams to generate mutually beneficial publicity, and a real relationship that has been carefully managed by PR to maximize its impact.