Another job for reconciliation

Heartthrob actor Nadech Kugimiya is back in the headlines, but not enviable ones this time. Unilever (Thai) Holdings, for whom he does the odd promotional job, has had a spat with his management team, Supachai “A” Srivijit and Nadech’s mum Sudarat.
Lips magazine took Nadech and his mother to Japan for a shoot to boost his new movie “Khoo Kam” and Nadech was asked to pose with an anti-dandruff shampoo from Unilever. Only if he gets paid extra, Mum said. But Unilever has already paid him about Bt10 million, Lips said. But “Khoo Kam” co-star Oranate “Richy” D Caballes is in the same photo and has nothing to do with Unilever, Supachai said.
So when they got back, Lips squealed to Unilever. Nevertheless, wanting to reassure their boy that everything was cool, Unilever sent his mum flowers to “apologise”.
Now then, according to ASTV, still-miffed Sudarat sent the flowers straight back, but Daily News says she merely gave the flowers to Supachai and had never taken the dispute seriously anyway.
Why are we talking about this at all? Because Unilever buys massive amounts of advertising space and time – it spent Bt6.6 billion on media exposure last year (sometimes even with us). Plus there was a rumour that Unilever was going to stop backing films and TV shows featuring any of A’s clients, which covers a lot of prime-time soap operas. (For the record, Unilever’s media agency, Myshare, says that’s just dumb.)
ASTV insists that Nadech’s mum is mostly to blame in all this, but a source close to Unilever tells Soopsip the big finger points at A. “His mother just wouldn’t listen to him.”
And what does Nadech’s mum say? Tune into Instagram for her damage control. If there is indeed something wrong, she says stoutly, she’ll take responsibility. Meanwhile Supachai is telling everyone who’ll interview him that he and Unilever have reconciled. “We’ve been working together for almost two decades – we still love each other.”
And no one at all is complaining about Nadech, not even Lips.