Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift dated from 2016 to 2023. Photos: AFP
In a rare move, Joe Alwyn has spoken about his six-year relationship with American pop star Taylor Swift, which began in 2016 and ended in April 2023.
The break-up made headlines at the time, but in a new interview with British newspaper The Sunday Times published online on June 15, the 33-year-old British actor – who is notoriously guarded about his personal life – acknowledged it for the first time publicly.
In the interview – which was to promote his new film Kinds Of Kindness directed by Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos and co-starring Emma Stone – Alwyn lamented the public nature of the end of the relationship.
“I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathise 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,” he says.
Even while they were a couple, Swift, 34, and Alwyn rarely spoke about their relationship. In the 2020 documentary Miss Americana, the singer shared that this was because of a mutual decision to keep things private.
Nevertheless, fans have feverishly speculated on why the couple called it quits, particularly after Swift released her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department (TTPD), in April 2024.
But in the new interview, Alwyn cautioned Swifties against making assumptions, saying: “You have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition. And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said.”
He also seemed to shoot down theories that the TTPD track, The Black Dog, is about him, saying that he has never been to Vauxhall.
Some fans had deduced that the song is about a pub called The Black Dog, located in the south London neighbourhood of Vauxhall, based on lyrics such as “I watch as you walk into some bar called The Black Dog, and pierce new holes in my heart”.
In any case, anyone hoping that Alwyn will continue to shed more light on his relationship with Swift will be disappointed.
“As everyone knows, we together – both of us, mutually – decided to keep the more private details of our relationship private. It was never something to commodify, and I see no reason to change that now... And, look, this is also a little over a year ago now, and I feel fortunate to be in a really great place in my life, professionally and personally,” he said, though he declined to clarify if he is still in contact with Swift or if he is dating again.
For her part, Swift has kept to her vow of secrecy about her time with Alwyn even after their “love story” came to a close.
But in an interview with Time magazine in December 2023, while talking about her current boyfriend, American football star Travis Kelce, she said: “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care... The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone.”
Swift is in the midst of the European leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour. She recently told crowds in Liverpool, England, that the tour will come to a complete end in December, presumably after a final stretch of shows in North America. – The Straits Times/Asia News Network
