>>824 The tone of the CB comments was quite different, wasn't it?

I think his if-I-were-any-moe-subdued-I'd-be-dead look on the GQ RC could have been for both reasons, really. He unclenched a little for some of the RL pix, possibly because it was in the US, possibly because the focus was more on the clothes than on him - here are a couple of the ones I mentioned in >>823:

https://www.weibo.com/torilla?is_hot=1#_rnd1536719773973
https://www.weibo.com/torilla?is_hot=1#_rnd1536719773973 (note the right eyebrow...)

He was relaxed enough inside the GQ shindig that he imitated Jeff Goldblum, in front of Jeff Goldblum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERg5rV74vQk

That Luke disapproved of the PR stunt might have contributed to him not being the one to shepherd Tom about during that summer.

The item that finally convinced me that Tom had to have been in on the PR ploy (however he might have felt about TS) was when it came out during IW promo that he had found out about the plan for Loki's sudden demise during a trip to LA in May of 2016. I could see him feeling that the plug had been pulled on a major part of his career, and a resulting sudden desire for all the publicity he could get.