Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: an actress and a musician call it quits, a pop star and an athlete get the giggles, and Meghan Markle Sussex posts the content.
If you haven’t weighed in the Beckham family feud yet, please join us! Paid subscribers got an in-depth look at all the theories about the rift between Posh and Becks and the Peltz-Beckhams this week — catch up here.
On Wednesday, People exclusively reported that Dakota Johnson, 35, and Chris Martin, 48, have broken up — for real this time — after eight years of dating. Of course, it is just a coincidence that this news is coming out the week of Johnson’s new movie premiere (she’s in New York to promote The Materialists alongside Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans). The important thing to know is that Johnson is single.
“It feels final this time,” a source told People, gesturing at the fact that the couple has broken up several times before. They were last photographed together on May 16 in Malibu, where they co-own a $12.5 million modern farmhouse.
Johnson and Martin reportedly got engaged in 2019, but Johnson didn’t always wear her giant emerald engagement ring. During her press rounds this week, she was photographed flashing her bare ring finger:
As for why the couple has finally called it? “They really tried to work through their issues but the age gap was often a problem,” a source told The Sun. Johnson also “expressed that she may want children in the future, whereas Chris is kind of done with that part of his life.”
Well, sure.
Johnson “really loves him and his children, and he deeply loves her, but things were just never lining up for them and it was very up and down,” the source continued.
Johnson referred to Apple and Moses Martin, Martin’s children with his ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow, as her stepkids in interviews and seemed to spend a fair amount of time with them. She even went to Disneyland with the kids and Blue Ivy in 2022, producing this iconic pap shot:
I think Johnson will be okay post-breakup, though. She was photographed getting dinner with Jennifer Lawrence — who dated Martin for a hot minute a few years before Johnson — last week in New York. She also went out with Taylor Swift the night before Swift’s masters news went public. Martin has … Coldplay.
Speaking of Swift: She is truly and deeply in love with Travis Kelce, according to a 69-year-old Swiftie who sat next to the couple at dinner in Palm Beach on Wednesday. Page Six interviewed one Pamela Goodman, who acknowledged being a member of the Facebook group Fearless Swifties Over 50, about her experience dining next to Swift and Kelce at Buccan, and let her tell you, it was the best night of her life.
Goodman revealed that Swift and Kelce were “giggly” and “adorable” during the meal.
“Trust me, this is true love,” she said. “This is not fake. They’re real. They’re adorable. They’re friendly and they’re just everything that those of us who are Swifties really believe they are. I saw it up close and personal.”
There you have it.
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: It seems like every young-mom celeb in LA is playing mahjong now. Can somebody help Hilary Duff?
Finally, I must leave you with this video Meghan Markle Sussex shared on her daughter Lilibet’s birthday to honor the time she did the viral “baby mama dance” in the hospital before her birth:
I think she should post stuff like this every day.
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The Meghan video is the best insight I have into the apparent charisma that bagged Harry and befriended Serena. If this is who she is behind closed doors: How fun! Why isn’t this Meghan on the Netflix show tho?!
Hahaha that video is so good!!! Totally different from her personality I get in static pics