In a new interview with The Guardian, actor Joe Alwyn shared far more about his relationship with pop star Taylor Swift than he usually does, even though most of it was
about why he doesn't really talk about that relationship.
After being asked if living with Swift's level of fame after being a relatively low profile actor was a shock, Alwyn answered, “It’s not something I think about, unless I’m in situations like this, and someone says, ‘What’s it like?’ and I have to think about what to say about it.”
As to why he doesn't really discuss the relationship publicly, Alwyn says, “It’s just not for other people. And I don’t say that with aggression.”
The couple were first introduced at the Met gala in 2016, and have been dating for five years. Some of Swift's songs supposedly contain references to Alwyn, particularly her 2019 song “London Boy.” But they say very little on the record about one another.
“I don’t know how best to talk about it,” Alwyn explained. “I mean, I’m aware of people’s … of that size of interest, and that world existing. It’s just not something I particularly care about, or have much interest in feeding, I guess, because the more it’s fed, the more you are opening a gate for intrusion.”
He continued, “I think that’s just my response to a culture that has this increasing expectation that everything is going to be given. If you don’t post about the way you make your coffee in the morning, or if you don’t let someone take a picture when you walk out of your front door, is that being private? I don’t know if it is. So I just don’t really feed that.”
In 2019, Swift was also interviewed by The Guardian, and responded to a similar line of questioning about Alwyn by saying, “If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we’d be talking about it—but it’s just that it goes out into the world.”
And Alwyn repeated something similar, saying, “If you and I were having a conversation, and having a shandy in my house, and it wasn’t being recorded, then, of course, other things would be said.”
When asked if he and Swift had discussed this kind of response to questions about them, Alwyn answered, “Erm. It was just like, well, why? There are more interesting things to talk about and I just think it feeds into a weird part of the culture that I’m not really interested in being a part of.”
He was willing to discuss his recent Grammy win, which came from a collaboration on two songs from Swift's album Folklore. A co-writer called William Bowery was named for her tracks “Betty” and “Exile,” and Mr. Bowery was mentioned again on the album Evermore. It was revealed that this was a fun pseudonym for Alwyn, and that they had created the songs together during lockdown.
“That was a surreal bonus of lockdown,” he said. “That’s an understatement...It wasn’t like, ‘It’s five o’clock, it’s time to try and write a song together.’ It came about from messing around on a piano, and singing badly, then being overheard, and being, like, ‘Let’s see what happens if we get to the end of it together.’”
He added, “I mean fun is such a stupid word, but it was a lot of fun. And it was never a work thing, or a ‘Let’s try and do this because we’re going to put this out’ thing. It was just like baking sourdough in lockdown...The Grammy was obviously this ridiculous bonus.”