Irina Shayk does it again
Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: a model gets a new boyfriend, an actor finds his way back to the casino, and Alex Rodriguez drinks water.
A few weeks ago, Deuxmoi posted a rumor that Kanye West and Irina Shayk were hooking up. Now, the 44-year-old rapper and 35-year-old Russian model have confirmed as much: They were photographed together in Provence on West’s birthday this week, and West’s go-to gossip outlet TMZ exclusively reported on the vacation.
“TMZ has confirmed they are 100% romantically together,” the site proclaimed. What phrasing! If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say they are 50% romantically together and 50% figuring out where their business interests align. But whatever. According to TMZ, West and Shayk have been dealing with each other for a few months — West reportedly made time to see Shayk in April when he was in New York for DMX’s memorial service.
You may recall that Kim Kardashian filed for divorce from West in February. According to Page Six, she is more than happy for someone else to keep her estranged husband company. “Kim is fine with it,” said a source. “She just wants him to be happy and healthy.”
Shayk’s most recent ex, Bradley Cooper, is similarly fine with this arrangement. A source told Us Weekly, “Bradley would be fully supportive of whoever Irina chooses to date — he just wants her to be happy.”
What does Shayk want? This is more difficult to discern. The model has a history of dating famous, sometimes difficult men: She was with Cristiano Ronaldo from 2010 to 2015 and started dating Cooper shortly after.
Shayk does not give many interviews, but she was publicly supportive of both stars and their careers, showing up at games and awards shows for Ronaldo and dutifully participating in Cooper’s Oscar campaign for A Star Is Born. She memorably sat stone-faced through his performance with Lady Gaga at the Oscars in 2019 (Cooper and Shayk were reportedly already broken up then, and she was just there to keep up appearances).
Though Cooper and Shayk appeared to get in a fight one time at Wimbledon in 2016, their breakup in 2019 was low-key. They share a 4-year-old daughter, Lea de Seine Shayk Cooper, and they’re occasionally still spotted together with her in New York.
To this day, Shayk has never talked about Cooper or Ronaldo in the press. (“Because my work requires me to be out there, I just decided my personal life will be quiet,” she told Glamour UK in 2019.) But, as a model, she’s happy to be photographed anytime. I’d guess this is exactly the kind of relationship West wants right now.
Would it surprise you to learn that Ben Affleck is gambling again? The one-time Blackjack cheat was photographed in Vegas this weekend, where he is reportedly filming a “secret project” and also making time to place his own bets. Affleck, 48, was photographed alone in the high roller room at the Wynn at 3 a.m. on Wednesday. He was later seen with his new-old girlfriend Jennifer Lopez’s mom, Guadalupe Rodríguez.
Rodríguez, 75, is known to be a big gambler herself — she once won $2.4 million at an Atlantic City casino, per Page Six. When J.Lo and Affleck were first dating in the early 2000s, Affleck often took Rodríguez on trips to Vegas and AC. Now, it seems, the tradition continues.
Lopez, meanwhile, is back in Miami, but she is reportedly planning a permanent move to L.A. in order to be closer to Affleck. "She will be between L.A. and the Hamptons this summer, but L.A. will be her base," a source told E! News. Sounds fun!
Elsewhere in the City of Angels, Kristen Bell was once again spotted with her new Netflix co-star Benjamin Levy Aguilar. It appears that these friendly workout dates have been happening since at least April — they’ve been photographed together in Griffith Park and outside various gyms several times. As far as I can tell this hasn’t come up on Dax Shepard’s podcast yet.
STUFF BY HILARY DUFF: This week, the series finale of Younger, the publishing-world comedy co-starring Hilary Duff, aired on Paramount+. Here’s how Duff described the show in 2014: “It's edgy. I would definitely say the show gets a lot edgier as it goes on.”
Finally, I will leave you with a recent photo of J.Lo’s ex-fiancé Alex Rodriguez:
It’s important to stay hydrated.
Thanks so much for opening this email. If you have a friend who likes celebrity gossip, why not forward it to them? And if you’d like to sign up for a paid subscription, you can do so here. As always, feel free to share your thoughts and theories in the comments or by replying to this email.
Hanging with this fella (and being on the receiving end of his googly eyes) is the most interesting Kristen Bell has been in a while