Joe goes public

Joe Alwyn will star in several films confirmed for the festival circuit this fall, and many of them could be award contenders. So it’s his first major promotional tour since Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk which came out before we found out that he and Taylor were together. As I’ve been saying, it’s going to be interesting to see how Joe handles it, and what topics will and won’t be allowed to be brought up during interviews. 

As we get closer and closer to the Venice festival premiere of The Favourite, Joe has now taken his Instagram from private to public, sharing a new photo with the cast including Nicholas Hoult, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone: 

Taylor Swift liked the photo which means her fans, who monitor her social media activity, were quick to figure out what had happened. And you can see his follower count is quickly climbing. In the two hours since I got the heads up about it (thanks R!), it’s already gone up by 5K from 35K to 40K at post time. By the time you read this, I’ll likely be closer to 50K, if not higher. So, in case you were wondering, yes, they’re still together. 

Right now, there are only a dozen or so posts on Joe’s IG. Or he edited it before switching to public. Still, there’s enough here to get some good gossip out of it. Like this:

But also…this:

They lyric I thought of immediately is from "Call It What You Want": 

My baby's fit like a daydream
Walking with his head down
I'm the one he's walking to

That was from January 2017, still four months before news broke that Taylor and Joe were a thing. When, presumably, she’d been writing song after song about him for reputation. 

I doubt that we’ll get much more than film-related content going forward, especially since he doesn’t show up on her IG. But remember, these days, when relationship status and celebrity friendship and feuds are analysed through likes and follows (Taylor for example hasn’t liked any of Karlie Kloss’s engagement posts), this is yet another way for the public – and Taylor’s fans – to deep dive into her life, in addition to whether or not she’s wearing a necklace. Again, it’ll also be interesting to see how Joe manages this next phase of his career, giving shine to his own work while living in the public domain as her boyfriend.