The Time When Jack Snubbed Rihanna
Rihanna’s much-anticipated Fenty Beauty launch was happening exclusively at Harvey Nichols, and our friends in the marketing team wanted to capture the event on camera. It was set to be a week of fever-pitch excitement at the store, culminating in a party where Rhi-Rhi herself would be attending. There would be an evolving Fenty window display over the seven nights preceding the party, which we decided to capture via timelapse. The fitters would move in after the shop shut, and we’d set up the cameras, taking one frame every 30 seconds for the whole night. Despite the excitement of the event, the filmmaking was slow-paced and mainly involved grappling with late-night drunkards to stop them from stumbling into our cameras, which had to be in exactly the same position night after night.
When the big night came, we had several editors upstairs, poised and ready to make social cuts as the footage came in. I was charged with filming Rihanna’s big entrance. But just before the moment arrived, we got asked to pivot. Apparently, Rihanna’s team wouldn’t sanction our cinema cameras, and we could only film her with our phones. This was before you could fine-tune an iPhone to shoot in professional formats, so it was a bit of a shocker. Her Highness was about to walk into the room as we ditched the cameras and readied our phones. She would do a circuit of the store past all the Fenty displays before joining a big party in the basement, where VIPs, influencers and superfans were already breathlessly waiting.
A ripple of excitement passed through the greeting committee of big cheeses as she entered the room, dressed in purple and nonchalantly holding a glass of champagne. She moved slowly towards me, stopping to talk to people as she went. I didn’t have the usual camera operating to worry about. It was simply a matter of pressing the red button and recording. Easy. I started filming as she came closer, then, to my great surprise, she said, "Hi." Was she talking to me? I was so focused on the task at hand that, in my cameraman brain, I forgot I didn’t have a big cinema rig on my shoulder obscuring my face and rendering me more camera than human, I just looked like any other fanboy with a phone. She was looking me in the eye and waiting for a response. This doesn’t happen when you have a viewfinder in front of your face, so by the time I realised I was supposed to reply, she had got tired of waiting and moved on.
"Cheers," I said hesitantly as she walked away.
My chance for a chit-chat with Rhi-Rhi had been and gone.
We wrapped filming, the socials were already live across the various channels, and the party was still in full swing downstairs. Ben and I went down to grab a well-earned beer. We propped up the bar, looking on as a mob of people surrounded Rihanna and her entourage on the dance floor. But then Rhi-Rhi decided to get a drink right next to us. She looked at me, probably thinking, 'here's that weirdo from earlier'. Suddenly, we were in the thick of it, people elbowing around us to get a better look, and we were jostled away from the bar.
I remember that, at this point, she sneezed. Just a very normal sneeze. It was like feeding time at the zoo and one of the penguins had just done a somersault.
"Oh wow! Look, she sneezed!" the lady next to me said, incredulously.
We finished our drinks and edged away.
The next day we released our timelapse window display video on the Harvey Nichols socials, and Rhi-Rhi reposted it, which meant it picked up a cheeky million views overnight. Just a shame I didn’t capture the sneeze, it could have REALLY blown up.