This Week in Gossip #31

Admit it, you’re mostly here for the Timberlake trash talk. Welcome!

1. Joe Alwyn Hesitantly Talks About His Ex-Girlfriend and is Far More Normal About it Than Anyone Else

It’s been over a year since Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift broke up. She’s now dating a sports guy and dominating the planet with her Eras Tour while he sticks to the margins of indie fame. He’s currently promoting Kinds of Kindness, the new Yorgos Lanthimos movie, which means he’s obliged to do at least one or two interviews.

While talking to The Sunday Times Style Magazine, he said what will probably be the only public comment he'll ever make on his love life. When asked if he had listened to the album, Alwyn didn’t directly answer the question. Instead, he told the publication:

“I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathize and understand the difficulties that come with the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years. That is a hard thing to navigate. What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain and the outside world is able to weigh in [...] And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.”

Honestly, good for him. This is a great answer. It still made a lot of Swifties mad, with some claiming he’s using her name for clout to promote a Cannes award-winning drama, or that he’s a bitter Betty who is oh-so-jealous of that dude with the fade haircut who is extremely eager to be famous.

I didn’t really have a lot of opinions on Alwyn before the split. I’d liked some of his performances (The Favourite, Catherine Called Birdy) but he wasn’t an actor whose work I sought out. Compared to some of his contemporaries like Paul Mescal and Timothee Chalamet, he just seemed to miss that specific quality that makes me perk up my ears and take notice. Yet when he broke up with Swift and immediately became the target of some intense fandom scrutiny, I felt for him. Nobody is prepared for the wrath of the Swifties (I know from experience!), and when you break up with a singer whose work is largely defined by her achingly personal songwriting, it feels like you’ve been flung into a loaded minefield with no safe way out.

Yet Alwyn was also never the public type, a sharp contrast from Swift’s following romances with both creepy racist Matty Healy and ambitious American football player Travis Kelce. The pair kept an extremely low profile for six years. Alwyn didn’t write fawning romantic posts on Instagram or share cute anecdotes about their life on talk shows. Really, he sat out the promotional side of his job as much as he could. When he did talk, if was always about the work, with general comments about wanting to keep his private life private.

We can’t offer armchair analyses on Swift’s state of mind. Fans have spent a long dang time trying to do that, sometimes with the material she provides and other times with straight-up nothing to back it up. Swifties quickly theorized that Alwyn had cheated on Swift (there’s no proof of that) or that he was trying to “gatekeep” her from the rest of the world (why does the internet suddenly not know what the word “gatekeep” means? Is this the Gen Z version of “literally”?) They previously prized his ability to keep his relationship away from the harsh gaze of the press but then viewed it as a sign of something wrong in their lives.

Swift’s next romances were starkly public, conspicuously for our consumption. Kelce in particular seems like a good fit for her in terms of two famous people who want to be even richer and more famous and are ambitious enough to make it happen. It’s as close as she’s come to being in a full-on power couple. If Alwyn didn’t want that sort of romance, could you blame him? He’s a middle-class English guy who makes indie movies and quietly supports political causes like Palestine. He’s famous enough that Yorgos Lanthimos and Claire Denis want to work with him but not so ubiquitous that he can’t buy his own shopping. It’s also worth noting that one of the reasons we saw less of Swift when she was with Alwyn is because she wanted it that way. It’s actually a lot more manageable to draw the lines between public and private when you’re not endlessly promoting things and ensuring the media pays attention. If she and Joe had wanted to do a few paparazzi walks on the beach, they would have.

I think Alwyn’s response was the best possible one he could have given. He was eloquent, considerate, and talked far more about the messy ecosystem of a breakup in the public eye than the relationship itself. He didn't trash talk Taylor and nobody who knew anything about him would expect him to. It won’t stop certain ardent Swifties from villainizing him, positioning him as the anti-Travis, her real true love (well, until that split, should it ever happen.) After this, Joe Alwyn gets to go back to being someone who not many people think about, and I’m sure that’s exactly what he wants.

2. Justin Timberlake Arrested for Driving While Intoxicated: The Internet Laughs

Justin Timberlake was arrested in New York for driving while intoxicated. He was held in custody and a mugshot was released. Page Six reported that he took a field sobriety test but refused to take a Breathalyzer test. He claimed to have only drunk one martini. In response, the internet had a veritable field day with memes, Britney Spears reaction gifs, and “cry me a river” jokes.

Everyone knows someone who either drove while drunk, was in the passenger seat of someone driving while drunk, or got into an accident because of someone driving while drunk. It’s a depressingly common phenomenon and it’s also an aggravating one because it’s 100% preventable. You certainly have no excuses if you’re rich enough to call a taxi or get a hotel for the night. So, while there’s obvious schadenfreude going on at Timberlake’s misery, there’s also an undeniable strain of fury because how many of us know a guy like that? How many of us were that guy? We could talk about white male privilege and the entitlement of being a millionaire surrounded by Yes men in this instance, but it’s also just the universal arrogance of life, right? You always let out a sigh of relief when a drunk driver is pulled aside before they hurt themselves or anyone else.