Joe Alwyn is opening up about his breakup with Taylor Swift, sort of.
“I hope everyone can empathize and understand the difficulties that arise at the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years,” Alwyn said in an interview published Sunday.
“That's a difficult thing to deal with. What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, a week later, it is suddenly in the public domain and the outside world can weigh in.”
He was speaking to the London Sunday Times Style magazine about his new film, “Kinds of Kindness,” in which he plays a single dad opposite Emma Stone, but naturally the conversation turned to Swift.
The couple dated for more than six years before a high-profile breakup in April 2023, and both have since remained silent about the details (assuming no one tells Swift's cryptic lyrics from “The Tortured Poet's Department”).
Alwyn and Swift had a very private relationship, something they both mutually decided, he said.
When they started dating in 2016, she was coming off years of relationships with big names in the entertainment industry, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Hiddleston, Calvin Harris, Joe Jonas, John Mayer and Harry Styles. In her 2020 documentary, “Miss Americana,” the pop musician said she was attracted to the less famous Alwyn because of his “wonderful, normal, balanced kind of life.”
The actor saw no reason to change the status quo after their split, preferring to keep any potentially complicated details under wraps.
“I'm sure you can understand, given the level of noise and scrutiny around my past relationship, why I wouldn't want to just open the door to things like that right now,” he told the magazine.
Alwyn said he doesn't want his past to be “dissected, speculated on, warped beyond recognition.”
“And the truth is that, until that last point, there will always be a gap between what is known and what is said,” he said. “I’ve made peace with that.”
Times staff writer Christi Carras contributed to this report.
