What must it be like for a fleeting interaction with a fellow celebrity to snowball into a fictious fight where a brand deal is at stake? In Nicole Kidman’s world that’s just an ordinary Sunday.

A video of Kidman brushing fellow A-list actress Salma Hayek’s arm away from her at the Balenciaga show during Paris Fashion Week has gone viral. That really is all the video shows: Kidman attempts to walk in one direction before Hayek puts her arm out to stop her, Kidman then turns around and walks back the other way. It’s dark in the room, everyone is wearing black, and Nicole has sunglasses on.

There’s every possibility that Kidman was headed towards the wrong seat and Hayek was trying to point her in the right direction before the show started. Hayek’s husband, Francois-Henri Pinault, runs the luxury goods empire that owns Balenciaga.

It’s also possible that a photographer was trying to get a photo of the two stars together and that Kidman didn’t want to pose for pictures unexpectedly. In a longer clip, Kidman is seen walking away saying, ‘You don’t need it’ and Hayek says, ‘Yes please, I do’, so it could indeed all boil down to a few missed press shots.

However, after a few minutes skim reading the internet, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were performing an act of stage combat on the runway and tearing each other’s hair out piece by piece.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the nonsense, it’s worth noting that the very next day Hayek posted a series of photographs from the show and lo and behold that included a picture of her and Kidman. In the digital age where, sadly, social media posts are a form of currency, would you really include your nemesis in your Instagram ‘dump’ the day after they ‘snubbed’ you at a fashion show? We think not.

Unfortunately, the fact Hayek was unbothered enough by the interaction to post Kidman on her Instagram page counts for nothing. It’s the sleuths and the unqualified body language experts who know best. And what they know is that two famous women having a slightly awkward logistical hoo-ha at an event is never just that – it must speak to a bubbling brawl between the women. One that’s probably riddled with jealousy and been going on for years behind the scenes.

That’s what some people seem to think, anyway. One person commented on the clip on TikTok asking, ‘Why is Nicole being so rude?’ while another creator dedicated a whole video to the interaction and said, ‘what on EARTH is going on?’ It’s been dubbed an ‘ugly red-carpet row’, a ‘tense exchange’ and prompted one fan to write, ‘something happened and I don’t know whose side to be on’.

Others have used it as an opportunity to just insult them for no good reason. ‘I can’t stand Nicole Kidman, and I find her unbelievable and unwatchable in anything,’ reads one irrelevant take on X, just because she’s trending.

Another video posted on Facebook shows the pair sat two seats apart at the show with Pinault sat in between and it’s captioned, ‘Is this the reason behind Nicole Kidman and Salma Hayek’s feud?’ The clip is set to the type of tense bassline usually reserved for episodes of HBO’s Industry and reads, ‘This gesture enraged Salma Hayek’.

It’s a story that has since run in several different languages in media outlets around the world. ‘Nicole Kidman PUSHES Salma Hayek away in ugly confrontation,’ shouts the Daily Mail. ‘Watch the VERY awkward moment Nicole Kidman tells Selma Hayek ‘Don’t touch me,’ offers The Sun. ‘The real meaning behind THAT “tense viral moment”’ is the general gist of things.

Other articles have offered faux concern for Kidman’s relationship with Balenciaga at large (she was made brand ambassador in 2023). One X post reads, ‘Nicole is an employee of Salma’s husband so yes, Salma gets to boss her around. Besides, Nicole is there working for Salma’s husband.’ Another user echoed this sentiment and wrote, ‘Oh that “don’t touch me” from Nicole to Salma at a brand show owned by her husband, that Balenciaga contract is in danger I fear.’

For most people, having a slightly awkward interaction with someone you know might occupy five minutes of your next coffee date with a friend. For celebrities, it’s enough to pull their work projects into question, unearth thousands of rumours online and subsequently break the internet.

At this point it feels like people will use absolutely any excuse to pit two women against each other – for little to no reason at all and for the benefit of no one. Just because two women fail to meet society’s standards of permanent grace and decorum, and because a short video has gone viral without context, does not mean they are in a bitter feud. In fact, it does not mean anything at all.