When Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift were together, the pair kept the details of their relationship under lock and key, rarely making public appearances together and keeping the facts of their love mostly hush-hush. However, following their split in early 2023, Swift seemingly alluded to their romance with a few of the tracks from her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department. Still, much of these details were left up to interpretation, and neither star had actually spoken up about the split… until now.

In a new profile for The Guardian, Alwyn made rare comments about his relationship with the pop superstar while chatting with journalist Tim Lewis about his new film The Brutalist, his complicated relationship to fame, and more.

During their chat, Alwyn was asked whether he ever thought that his relationship with Swift would overpower his career.

“I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control,” he responded. “And, right from the beginning, [I] 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. 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 fucked.”

As for how he deals with all the press attention, Alwyn noted: “I have great family and friends and real things in my life; those are the things that kept me tethered to the ground. So, I don’t know how else to say it, it’s… just in a different room.”

In the interview, the actor also briefly touched on making songs together with Swift, specifically talking about the moment where she caught him playing around on a piano, and the tune eventually became her Folklore track “Exile” (featuring Bon Iver).

“Lockdown was a whole host of surprises and that was pretty special,” Alwyn said of working on the album and eventually earning a Grammy for it. “That was not something I would have foreseen.”

This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Taylor Swift – exile (feat. Bon Iver) (Official Lyric Video)

But when asked if he just wants to be able to move on from the past (and, seemingly, his breakup), Alwyn said, “That’s something for other people to do. 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.”

Alwyn and Swift were together for over six years, having first interacted at the Met Gala in 2016—a moment that Swift references in her Reputation track “Dress.”

Then, in the spring of 2023, the pair split amicably. “The relationship had just run its course,” a source noted at the time.