Since I’m not part of the Snake Fam, I sometimes forget that Taylor Swift has actually been in a very serious relationship for the past four years. Reportedly, Taylor met Joe Alwyn in the fall of 2016, just as she was ending things with Tom Hiddleston (RIP Tiddles). Joe and Taylor were pretty quiet about their relationship for months, but slowly she let the Snake Fam see bits and pieces of her thing with Joe. Throughout the past four years though… this relationship has just been different from anything she’s ever been through. She seems genuinely content with Joe and there hasn’t been the strong “performative love” aspect, which has been common with other boyfriends. Sure, I think Tay and Joe look like brother and sister, but even I have to admit that they seem like a mature match and a good match. So, no surprise, we’re hearing now that Tay and Joe are in it for the long haul.
Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn are “in it for the long haul.” The singer and the actor have been dating for about four years and appear to be stronger than ever. Just last week, they were photographed holding hands on a rare outing in London, where they are quarantining together.
A source tells ET, “Taylor has gotten more and more comfortable being public with Joe and letting fans in on their romance in a way that she feels is still protecting it. She loves Joe so much and, of course, is not trying to hide their relationship, but she prefers to keep specific details private. Taylor and Joe are in it for the long haul and totally see a future with each other. They don’t need outside praise or attention and are so fulfilled just being with each other and growing together as a couple.”
Alwyn and Swift’s time spent together in quarantine, meanwhile, has been great for the pair. They even collaborated on her album, Folklore, with the actor — under the pseudonym William Bowery — co-writing a number of her songs, among them “Betty” and “Exile.”
Last month, another source told ET that the singer’s beau has been a “great support system” as she’s dealt with not only the global threat of the coronavirus, but also her mother’s health battle.
“He is the one constant in her life that she can truly rely on,” ET’s source said. “Joe has helped Taylor with her music, inspiring it. She is so grateful for him and in love with him. He is her cheerleader and rock. They have spoken about their future together and they love celebrating the holidays together.”
[From Entertainment Tonight]
I do wonder if either of them wants to get married. I mean… four years, they live together, they collaborate with each other, they’re “in it for the long haul.” Of course no one has to get married and of course marriage isn’t for everyone. I’m just curious about whether they’ve discussed it and decided that they don’t need it. Taylor’s fans are always eager to claim that Taylor will announce, any day now, that she and Joe got hitched, or that she’s wearing a wedding dress in some album artwork therefore they got married in quarantine or something. I always think back to that Graham Norton interview with Taylor and John Cleese, where he spoke about getting a divorce and Taylor joked about that being the reason she wasn’t married. I think she’s very aware of her wealth and how her business would be affected. Hm.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Taylor’s social media.
Casey Affleck was trending the other day when the cardboard cutout of Ana de Armas was photographed being thrown out by… someone…outside Ben Affleck’s house. I think it was pretty obvious at the time that it wasn’t Casey? But, you know, Twitter sometimes takes off with something and it gets wild. Ca…
Lady Gaga’s team helped Garth Brooks with his glam and I’m obsessed with this. Was he wearing her line, Haus Laboratories? If you don’t think Garth Brooks knows his way around a liquid liner than you clearly don’t remember Chris Gaines. “I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?” If…
I’m finally getting back to wearing jewelry again. It was freeing at the start of the pandemic to rid myself of all style, but with hope (ish) around the corner, I’m getting back into accessorizing. It’s perfect timing too because I recently discovered an Indigenous brand called Copper Canoe Woman t…
Look, it’s not that I *didn’t* like Gigi and Zayn before, I just didn’t think about them that much. But I guess now I am gonna have to officially add them to my ‘actively enjoyable’ column. I never said I wasn’t fickle, did I? I paid enough attention to know that she had a baby in the fall, and rem…
We finally learned Gigi Hadid’s daughter’s name: Khai. Khai Malik? Khai Hadid-Malik? I’m okay with it! [Just Jared]
Our Friend sounds like a horrible movie. Flat-out. [Pajiba]
Did Jenna Maroney – I mean Jane Krakowski – date MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell? Maybe, but only for the attention. [Dlisted]
Coverage of US Figure Skating National Championships! [Go Fug Yourself]
The Seditious Senators should be denied committee seats. [Towleroad]
Love these Jennifer Lopez edits! [LaineyGossip]
President Biden is already making TERFs mad. Good! [Jezebel]
Michelle Obama’s stylist explains her Avenger look. [Buzzfeed]
A piggy woke up to eat a cookie. [OMG Blog]
Ghostbusters: Afterlife and No Time To Die got pushed back AGAIN! [Seriously OMG]
In today’s most unsurprising news, Bridgerton, one of Netflix’s biggest original hits of all time, has been renewed for a second season. As the first season followed the plot of the first book in Julia Quinn’s “Bridgerton” series, so to the second season will follow the second book, The Viscount Wh…
Helena Bonham Carter had a recent interview in the Guardian to promote her work as Princess Margaret in The Crown’s Season 4. Margaret’s story is somewhat marginalized in this part of royal history – she’s boozy and blousy and her marriage is in tatters and on and on. But HBC really fits that role, doesn’t she? That sort of worn-out aristocratic life-in-tatters. Helena is actually quite different than that though – she seems very upbeat, chatty and generally optimistic about life. In this interview, she mostly talks about her personal life, her divorce from Tim Burton, her coworkers and stuff like that. It’s very interesting – you can read the full piece here.
On her wacky fashion: “I love dressing up and creating myself, as it were, according to the day and the mood. But it’s an illusion, because then the Daily Mail photographs you, and you see it and think, that wasn’t what I meant at all… I promise you, even when I think I’m being normal, somehow it comes out wrong. It really does! I later see the photos and think, what was I thinking?”
On her children, who are 16 & 12: “Ah, children. It does get easier, I promise. But until then, work is the holiday.” Her children with Burton, Billy and Nell, are 16 and 12. “There suddenly came a point when they could look after each other, and it was like magic.”
She loves costume dramas because of the clothes: “Put it this way, when I see it all afterwards I think, ‘Why did I do that? I look exactly the same as I’ve done before [in other period dramas], with mad curly hair.’ But I do have a nostalgia for that time, and I love period dress. And the corset, as punishing as it is, if you know how to wear it, exhaling after they put it on, does sort out your posture. There’s a lot to be said for it, really.”
On Harvey Weinstein: “I never see anything in black and white. I believe people are multicoloured, they’re almost never all good or all bad. Weinstein was a bully, full stop. But also, not full stop, really. He was a bully, possible sociopath and fantastically effective producer of films,” she says. Is she saying that, just as being famous doesn’t excuse his crimes, so his crimes don’t cancel out his work? “Yes, exactly. It’s not about excusing him, but seeing the whole picture to understand him.”
Whether she’s surprised at Johnny Depp’s dramas: “Oh, totally. There’s something quite old-fashioned about Johnny, with these manners – none of it makes sense. But the man’s not stupid. He wouldn’t have gone to this length if he thought he was in the wrong.”
Being married to a power player: “For years people have chosen to sleep with powerful people, and that’s their prerogative. After all, I got two children out of it…Although, I never got a free ride with Tim because I was sleeping with him. I was always auditioning. And I gave him two kids and everything!”
Splitting from Tim Burton: “It’s taken us some time to adjust, but I think it’s really very good now. And the kids are fine, they get to have a dual life. At first it’s a horrible thing to get used to, not having your children around [when you share custody]. The cruelty of divorce is extraordinary. But then you get to a point where you’re like, Oh, I get this week off! Some parts are very much to be recommended.”
Why she & Burton split: “Oh, I can’t talk about that… I have a responsibility to the children not to talk about it. As well as to Tim, I respect him. But I didn’t leave, put it that way. Although I will say this in the positive sense: I do think there’s a point where people fit for a certain time, sometimes, and if you can, you recognise that you’ve given what you can, and you’re going to stop each other from evolving, and if you can afford it, well…”
On Kenneth Branagh: “Oh, Ken. I didn’t really live with Ken. Did I work with Ken? I can’t remember anything, although there’s a reason the memory goes…Me and Ken was very different from me and Tim. You know, Ken avoided directing me once we were together because it can be complicated and I think he didn’t want – anyway, that’s all blood under the bridge,” she says. By coincidence, or maybe not, when Thompson was asked about their affair in 2013 she also described it as “blood under the bridge”.
[From The Guardian]
From the way she talks about Tim throughout the interview, they’re still very much in each other’s lives on a daily basis. She doesn’t even blink at one point when she takes a photo of her interviewer’s dog to send to Tim. She sprinkles the conversation with references to him. I think she still very much adores him and perhaps if certain things had been different, she still could see herself married to him. I think he cheated and walked away, but they figured out a way to coparent and all of that. And I chuckled at “I do think there’s a point where people fit for a certain time, sometimes, and if you can, you recognise that you’ve given what you can, and you’re going to stop each other from evolving, and if you can afford it, well…” The “if you can afford it” is so posh, I screamed!
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Many people the last few days have been talking about the trauma they’ve been carrying for the last four years and recognising it in the relief of Joe Biden’s inauguration. That relief may be temporary, because of course there is so much work to be done, so many issues still to be confronted, but th…
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Obviously, I was a fan of now Vice President Kamala Harris for a while. But I mostly paid attention to her politics and what she was doing as the AG of California, then as a senator. Before the presidential campaign really ramped up, I didn’t know much about her personal life. So it’s been amazing to learn about her big, crazy family through the inauguration lens: her beloved sister and beloved niece, the grand-niece babies, and her two adult step-children, Ella and Cole Emhoff. Ella and Cole are the products of Doug Emhoff’s first marriage to Kerstin Emhoff. I was mildly curious about VP Harris’s relationship with Doug’s first wife, and here we go: People Magazine has an article pointing out that Kerstin actually attended the inauguration. Not only that, VP Harris and Kerstin Emhoff are close friends, and Kerstin worked on Kamala’s presidential campaign.
Among the many celebrities, politicians, and extended family members to attend Wednesday’s swearing-in ceremony of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, one face stood out: Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of the Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is close with the couple. The mother of two joined her children, Cole and Ella, to lend her support and attend the inaugural festivities this week, sharing a handful of images on Instagram that show the three, properly-masked, heading to various events including the swearing-in.
“This is real. So excited behind the mask!” she captioned a photo of herself in front of the Capitol steps. Kerstin and Doug were married for 25 years before their divorce. Harris married Emhoff in August 2014, became a stepmom to Cole and Ella, who the vice president spoke highly of throughout the campaign.
In an August interview with PEOPLE shortly after she was announced as Biden’s running mate, Harris spoke of her close-knit relationship with the two. “My children don’t call me stepmom, they call me Momala,” Harris said. “We’re a very modern family. Their mom is a close friend of mine.”
Emhoff, who could be seen seated a few rows behind her children at Wednesday morning’s swearing-in, has been described as a “dear friend” by Harris. “Kerstin and I hit it off ourselves and are dear friends,” Harris wrote in Elle last year. “She and I became a duo of cheerleaders in the bleachers at Ella’s swim meets and basketball games, often to Ella’s embarrassment. We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional.”
Harris also spoke warmly of Kerstin in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, saying her husband’s ex-wife had been a critical part in growing closer to Cole and Ella. “One of the keys to my relationship with Cole and Ella is their mom,” Harris said. “We are friends. We have a very modern family … The thing about blended families — if everyone approaches it in the way that there’s plenty of love to share, then it works.”
[From People]
That’s very cool and frankly, it’s a relief. Before I knew all of this, there was something nagging in the back of my mind, that the Second Gentleman’s first wife might suddenly pop up and make a big PR mess. It sounds like Doug and Kerstin have it figured out though. For those interested in the timeline: Doug and Kerstin got married in 1992, and they were married for 16 years, which means they got a divorce in 2008. Doug and Kamala met in 2013 when a mutual friend set them up on a blind date. They were married the next year, in a ceremony officiated by Kamala’s sister.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Instagram.