Joe Alwyn Gives Rare Look Into His Relationship With Taylor Swift

Joe Alwyn has given a rare look into his former relationship with Taylor Swift, disclosing how he navigated heightened public interest in their romance while urging others to move on from it just as he has.

In an interview with the Guardian published Sunday, Alwyn reflected on the couple’s more than six-year long relationship and whether or not he ever feared it would eclipse his career.

“I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control,” he said.

“And, right from the beginning, I tried to focus on the things that are meaningful for me: friends, family, work, of course,” the actor continued. “So noise outside of that, I think I’ve done what lots of people who find themselves in the public eye do, which is just try and ignore it. If you don’t, and if you let all of that other stuff in, and if it starts to affect you and your behavior, you’re living from the outside in. And then you’re pretty f---ed.”

The 33-year-old actor, who stars in one of the award circuit’s buzziest films of the year The Brutalist, went on to explain that he has “great family and friends and real things in my life” that keep him “tethered to the ground.”

“So I don’t know how else to say it, it’s...just in a different room,” Alwyn continued.

When asked by the outlet if he wants to move on from the public interest in his time with the pop star, Alwyn pressed back and said that he has—and the moving on is “something for other people to do” now.

“We’re talking about something that’s a while ago now in my life,” he added. “So that’s for other people. That’s what I feel.”

Alwyn and Swift were first linked in 2016 and were repeatedly photographed together in 2017, sparking rumors of a romance. It wasn’t until 2018 that Alwyn publicly addressed their relationship for the first time, telling British Vogue that he’s “aware people want to know about that side of things” but would rather keep things private and “talk about work.”

While the pair worked together on Swift’s Folklore and Evermore albums and were at the epicenter of engagement rumors for years, by April 2023 it was confirmed that they had split.

A source told People magazine at the time that Swift and Alwyn had “rough patches before and always worked things out, so friends thought they would take some time apart but eventually come back together” before adding, “ultimately, [they] weren’t the right fit for one another.”