Joe Alywn Comments on Working With Taylor Swift During the Pandemic: ‘That Was Pretty Special’
Joe Alwyn and Taylor Swift‘s years-long relationship, which came to an end in 2023, continues to make headlines in 2025.
The actor, who starred in A24’s The Brutalist and is doing press for the film ahead of Oscar nominations being determined and announced this month, recently spoke with The Guardian about his work on the project — which premiered at Venice, with director Brady Corbet receiving the Silver Lion honor for best direction, and is up for several Golden Globes. An interview about Alwyn’s journey as an actor shifted topics to his experience with fame, and how dating one of the most recognizable pop stars in the world accelerated his ascent into celebrity.
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The Guardian asked Alwyn if he worried “his relationship with Swift would overshadow his career.”
“I have tried just to focus on controlling what I can control,” Alwyn said. Looking back to his earliest work in the industry, in the 2016 film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, he added, “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. 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.”
When the publication’s reporter pressed that Alwyn “must just want to move on” from the public scrutiny he faced during his time with Swift, Alwyn tactfully made it clear that he has moved on, while pointing out that moving on remains “something for other people to do.”
“We’re talking about something that’s a while ago now in my life,” he replied. “So that’s for other people. That’s what I feel.”
In the article, published Sunday (Jan. 5), Alwyn spoke fondly of his collaborative work with his ex. He received credit as songwriter “William Bowery” on songs from Swift’s pandemic-era sister albums, 2020’s Folklore (“Exile,” “Betty”) and Evermore (“Champagne Problems,” “Coney Island,” “Evermore”), and on one from 2022’s Midnights (“Sweet Nothing”). Alwyn also received credit as a co-producer on several Folklore tracks, which resulted in him being awarded an album of the year Grammy alongside Swift, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner in 2021.
“Lockdown was a whole host of surprises and that was pretty special,” Alwyn said of writing songs with Swift.
He continued, “That was not something I would have foreseen.”
The last time Alwyn, who’s known to stay quiet about his private life, spoke of his past relationship with The Tortured Poets Department hitmaker was in the summer, when The Sunday Times Style Magazine also brought her up in their convo with the actor.
“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. That is a hard thing to navigate,” said Alwyn, who navigated questions about Swift carefully; he noted they’d agreed to “keep the more private details of our relationship private” during their time together.
Of their split, which made the news on April 8, 2023, he noted to The Sunday Times, “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 … So you have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition. And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.”
Read The Guardian‘s full feature on Alwyn here. The actor is next reported to appear in two Shakespeare-themed films: Aneil Karia’s adaptation of Hamlet and Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet (yes, Hamnet; not a typo), a story centering on William Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes.
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