Mory Fontanez Keeps Celebrities Sane

There’s no shortage of secret whisperers to the stars. Want someone to tell you exactly which adaptogens to add to your morning smoothie? There’s a guru for that. Does your lymphatic system need a thorough draining? We know someone who knows someone. Your aura’s hankering for a cleanse? Right this way. In Hollywood, all these experts and so many more are just one DM away. But what about an expert to guide you through the experience of celebrity itself? That’s where Mory Fontanez comes in.

As the intuitive life and leadership coach for celebs like Dylan Mulvaney, Jonathan Van Ness, and Billy Eichner, Fontanez helps clients navigate all aspects of living in the public eye. Sometimes her work might take the form of editing a Notes app apology or vetting a politically charged Instagram Story — prior to launching her practice, Fontanez spent nearly two decades in crisis management at various Fortune 500 companies — but the core of her practice now focuses on the emotional toll of fame.

“We love to build up our idols, because that’s how we project what we want. Then we love to tear them down, because that’s how we deal with our own shame and envy,” Fontanez tells Bustle, describing the trajectory many of her clients face. “It’s really untenable, because this celebrity’s learned that their value comes from attention and is now being torn down. The biggest challenge is convincing them that what other people think doesn’t matter, even when in their brain is like, ‘But that’s what got me here.’”

Below, the Higher Self author takes us through her three-pronged approach for helping celebrities survive, well, celebrity.

Going from being virtually unknown to incredibly known sounds like… a mindf*ck. What are the biggest challenges you see come out of that shift?

The biggest challenge is that you’re successful because of what other people think about you. You’re trading on that attention for your own dreams to come true. Then you become famous and you’re still attached to what other people think about you.

The work really becomes about grounding them in the truth of their purpose. It’s like, “Dylan, how easy was it for you to make those hilarious videos? How easy is it for you, Jonathan, to just love hair so much?” That’s what people love. They’re magnetized toward the thing you bring to the world. If you can stay focused on that, then what people think truly doesn’t make or break you.

What are some of the practical grounding tools or exercises you recommend to help your clients move away from craving that external validation?

The first thing we always do is locate the fear voice. Who is this, in me, that believes she’s not enough? Who is this that believes my validation comes from people loving me? Usually, that’s what we call a “little self” — the younger version of yourself who’s just looking for love in the way they didn’t get it then. So the first part of my method is [learning to] love your little. We go find these littles and we listen to them: What are they afraid of? What are they worried about? What do they actually need beneath all of that?

Then the next part is [connecting with] your higher self: the one that’s showing up fully in your dignity and truth. We do a lot of visualizations like, What does this higher self look like? What does it sound like? If I were the embodiment of this self, what would I think about myself? What action would I take right now?

Which allows us to do the third part — deciphering between an action that’s being driven by the younger self or informed by the higher self, and choosing to take the action being informed by [the latter]. The more you take action from that higher-self voice, the more evidence you create for your brain that it always has the right answers. That’s the voice you will naturally begin to follow.

How did you begin to formulate this three-pronged approach?

I worked on the PR side for 20 years, and really what it entailed is that anytime a company or CEO had a public issue with their customers or fans based on an action that was taken, my team and I would go in and devise a strategy to help them rebuild trust with the audience. On a good day, it meant that they were coming from a place of truth and integrity. On a bad day, it meant that we had to craft that narrative. That just started to kill my soul, so I decided that I wanted to go help these very same culture makers actually come from a place of deep alignment with their own wisdom in reactivity.

Your method covers the day-to-day of navigating life in the public eye, but what about when a celebrity is in an active crisis? For example, how did you advise Dylan through Beergate?

The first rule in a crisis for me is to pause. With Dylan, I was the first call she made when it happened, and I was able to be like, “Stop. We’re not going to say anything. We’re going to process it.” If you paid attention, it took her months to publicly speak about it, because what we were doing was trying to build a firm ground beneath her. When all of the littles were saying, “See, they’re going to take you down. See, you’re not worth anything. See, you shouldn’t be making money off of it.”

Then it becomes about what parts of me are deeply activated from this moment? What stories are they telling me about what’s going to happen? And accountability. What have I done here? What have I said? What have I not done that is harming my community?

In the age of social media, there’s an expectation for celebrities to comment on everything from the Trump administration to geopolitical crises. How do you advise your clients when they’re thinking about how best to weigh in?

When the Gaza situation [first happened], there was a lot of silence. Then a lot of people were saying, “What the f*ck?” Because your community’s expecting you to stand in solidarity. But if it isn’t in alignment with your truth — if it isn’t something that you genuinely feel passionate about and you’re just speaking up because everyone else is doing it — that’s also not authentic, either. My guidance is, it really has to be something that truly matters to you. If you go back and look, the celebrities who have done that are fine. Because people can sense the truth. That it’s their true identity and not an identity someone else is projecting onto them.

What’s the number one piece of advice you wish you could give to every person in the public eye?

Most people are walking around in a haze of fear and self-hatred. So if you are going to judge yourself by the way that people are reacting to you, you’re looking at yourself in a really, really dirty mirror. Make sure you’re reflecting your own truth, not looking to someone else who’s not in their truth to reflect it back at you.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.