Joe Alwyn was never one to speak much about his 6-and-a-half year relationship with Taylor Swift, but now, he is ready to fill the blanks a bit about, as Swift put it on The Tortured Poets Department, how it did end. Alwyn did an interview with The Sunday Times Style magazine for its June 16 issue, where he addressed his split from Swift for the first time.
Notably, Alwyn revealed that the public knew about their breakup very quickly after it happened. Entertainment Tonight broke news of Swift and Alwyn breaking up “a few weeks” before on April 8, 2023. But in reality, the timeline was much tighter than that, Alwyn shared.
Alwyn said, “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.”
He added that there is plenty people don’t know, even with all the things sources said and Swift herself shared through her art. “So 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,” he explained. “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.”
Alwyn also reiterated the choice he and Swift made to keep to their love story as private as possible when asked about some of the conspiracy theories around their split. “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.”
When asked directly whether Swift releasing Tortured Poets, where she sings about their relationship, makes Alwyn more inclined to speak on it, he repeated, “Well, as I said, there’s always going to be a gap between what’s known and what’s said.”
He declined to share if he was in touch with Swift or dating again: “I’m sure you can appreciate, given the level of noise and scrutiny about my past relationship, why I wouldn’t want to just open the door to things like that right now.”
But he did offer one bit of fact-checking: He denied ever going to The Black Dog, the pub in London’s Vauxhall that Swift’s fans speculated Swift could be singing about in her song of the same name. (Other fans believe the song is about Matty Healy, the British musician Swift dated briefly after Alwyn.) “I’ve never been to Vauxhall,” he said with a telling smile, the outlet noted.
He said generally, he tries to ignore the worst comments online about him: “I try and dial that volume down. I was obviously made aware of it and think that mistreating anyone, whether it’s in person or behind the anonymity of a keyboard, is shameful.”
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When Swift and Alwyn’s breakup news came out, a source told Entertainment Tonight at the time that it was amicable and “not dramatic. The relationship had just run its course. It’s why [Alwyn] hasn’t been spotted at any shows.” News of Swift’s next relationship, her short-lived fling with Healy, would break on May 3, 2023. It was very impactful on her, as Healy seemingly inspired many Tortured Poets songs. (To some fans, he was the muse for more than Alwyn.)
A source close to Alwyn told People on April 19, 2024 that the British actor chose not to talk about Swift throughout their dating because he wanted their relationship to remain “his own personal story.”
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