#116: Reetu Kabra, publicist

My guest this week is Reetu Kabra, a London-based publicist with over 15 years’ experience working in house for renowned media and entertainment companies including the BBC and BBC Studios, UKTV, Discovery Networks and Penguin Random House. 

During her time at BBC Worldwide she handled global publicity for the internationally acclaimed Doctor Who and Sherlock as well as other major BBC dramas including War & Peace, Luther and Wolf Hall.  In 2017, she managed the Cannes Film Festival publicity campaign for Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake: China Girl.  

Shortly thereafter Reetu founded her own company: RKPR, where she manages personal publicity for a number of actors and writers, as well as consulting for clients including Amazon Prime, Netflix and Apple TV+ among others. She recently worked as a unit publicist for The Essex Serpent starring Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston (AppleTV+/See-Saw Films) and the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (Netflix). 

We discuss many things, including how Reetu wound up working in the entertainment industry, where you begin with creating a publicity campaign and defining your audience, what exactly unit publicity is, what goes into creating behind-the-scenes featurettes such as this one for The Essex Serpent and what sets RKPR apart.

Reetu was an incredibly intelligent and incisive guest and for me, this conversation served as a reminder that there really is a strategy behind publicity and how shows or even people get promoted, it’s not just about putting a trailer up on YouTube and hoping for the best. There is real creativity and specificity and ambition when it comes to finding an audience for a film or TV series.