Nearly seven years after the two were repeatedly photographed together, Shawkat addressed the speculation during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live on Sunday. She was on the show with Kristen Stewart to promote their film The Wrong Girls when host Andy Cohen brought up the old dating rumors.
“I was obsessed with the Brad Pitt dating rumors,” Cohen told her.
“Me too,” Stewart added.
Shawkat laughed and admitted the question was one of her favorites. She explained that she and Pitt became friends after being introduced by filmmaker Spike Jonze.
“It sounds all very chic and Hollywood,” she joked. “But we met, and he’s really into art and he’s very cool and we became friends.”
Their friendship quickly became tabloid news after they were seen together at an art exhibition, a Ye concert and even grabbing burgers at In-N-Out in 2019.
Shawkat said people naturally assumed they were a couple simply because she was spending time with Pitt.
“If you stand next to him everyone thinks you’re dating,” she said. “Like, even his own mother.”
The rumors even caught the attention of Shawkat’s grandmother. The actress recalled that her Arabic grandmother saved an Us Weekly cover featuring Shawkat with the headline asking, “Who’s the new girl?”
“There was a really bad photo,” Shawkat recalled. “I was like, ‘I’ve been working in film for 30 years, you’ve never seen anything, but you love this.’”
Despite the unwanted attention, Shawkat joked that being linked to Pitt gave her some extra Hollywood “cred.” More importantly, she said, it gave her a longtime friend.
“He’s great, he’s the coolest,” she said of Pitt.
Shawkat has previously discussed the experience with The New Yorker, explaining that she once told Pitt how much attention their friendship was attracting.
“I was like, ‘You know everyone thinks we’re dating? And there’s this whole thing, and I’m being followed,’” she recalled. Pitt’s response was straightforward: “I’m sorry. It happens. If you hang out with me, it happens.”
Pitt also addressed the rumors in 2019 after he and Shawkat were photographed together at the “L.A. on Fire” art exhibition. At the time, he dismissed the speculation.
“I don’t know how many women they’ve said I’ve been dating the last two or three years,” Pitt told The New York Times. “And none of it’s true.”
Shawkat and Pitt have remained friends, while Pitt has been romantically linked to jewelry designer Ines de Ramon since 2022. The old dating rumors may have been false, but Shawkat clearly got one unexpected benefit from them: a story that still makes headlines years later.
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