Joe Alwyn urges people to move on from Taylor Swift breakup: 'We’re talking about something that's a while ago'

Joe Alwyn has a blunt message for anyone still obsessing over his breakup from pop megastar, Taylor Swift: move on.

During a recent chat with The Guardian, the Kinds of Kindness actor offered a rare comment on the six-year relationship, which ended in 2023. When the outlet suggested that he likely has a desire to move on from the romance and the lasting fervor for details, Alwyn replied that he already has.

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

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The Brutalist star also addressed the relationship's effect on his own career, pushing back when the outlet asked whether he feared Swift's stardom and the narrative surrounding their relationship would overshadow his own pursuits.

"I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control," Alwyn said. "And, right from the beginning, tried to focus on the things that are meaningful for me: friends, family, work, of course. 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."

He added, "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.”

He went on to credit his loved ones with keeping him sane through it all. "I have great family and friends and real things in my life; those are the things that kept me tethered to the ground,” Alwyn insisted.

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Swift's relationships have long been a subject of public fascination, in large part because her music often obliquely references her significant others, inciting fans to speculate about details. Though the two had a notoriously private relationship, Swift often dropped Easter eggs about Alwyn in songs dating as far back as her 2017 album, Reputation.

The obsession with their relationship hit a fever pitch in 2020, following the release of her albums Folklore and its follow-up Evermore, which were conceived and made during lockdown. Alwyn was credited as a co-writer on Folklore's "Exile" and "Betty"; and Evermore's "Champagne Problems," "Coney Island," and "Evermore” under the pseudonym William Bowery. He won his first Grammy when Folklore won Album of the Year in 2021.

Reflecting on it now, Alwyn said, "Lockdown was a whole host of surprises and that was pretty special. That was not something I would have foreseen."

Related: Joe Alwyn opens up about 'surreal' experience working with Taylor Swift and why they kept it a secret

When the outlet pointed out that he only needs an Emmy, Oscar and Tony to achieve EGOT status, he joked, "Yeah, I’ll just breeze through those."

Alwyn is also credited as a writer on Swift's "Sweet Nothing," a track off of Midnights, the album released ahead of the couple's 2023 breakup. The actor largely avoided speaking about his former girlfriend and musical collaborator in the wake of their split, but did address the relationship in June 2024, during an interview with The Sunday Times.

"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," Alwyn said at the time. "That is a hard thing to navigate."

He added, "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."

As for his reluctance to speak on the subject, the actor noted that he and Swift "mutually" decided to "keep the more private details of our relationship private." He concluded, "It was never something to commodify, and I see no reason to change that now.”

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Alwyn, who got his breakout starring in Ang Lee's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, is hot off the heels of a triple role in Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness and a supporting role in Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, which just picked up three Golden Globes on its way to becoming a surefire Oscars contender.

He is next set to star in Aneil Karia's adaptation of Hamlet, and Chloé Zhao's much-anticipated adaptation of the novel Hamnet.

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