Alia Shawkat is pulling back the curtain on her and Brad Pitt’s friendship seven years after the pair’s rumored romance.
“I was obsessed with the Brad Pitt dating rumors,” Andy Cohen confessed during the Sunday, August 16, episode of Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen while interviewing Shawkat, 37, and her The Wrong Girls costar Kristen Stewart.
Stewart, 36, teased, “Me too. I was enthralled.”
Shawkat took a sip of her drink, telling Cohen, 58, “Oh God, of course you were.”
When Cohen asked how the 2019-2020 rumors began, Shawkat said it was all pretty innocent.
“This is my favorite question to get asked,” Shawkat joked. “Um, no — he’s just my friend. We became friends.”
The Arrested Development alum recalled, “[Filmmaker] Spike Jonze introduced us. It sounds all very chic and Hollywood. But we met, and he’s really into art and he’s very cool and we became friends.”
Shawkat noted, “Everyone thought we were dating, because if you stand next to him, everyone thinks you’re dating. Like, even his own mother.”
Cohen pointed out, “There could be worse dating rumors,” to which Shawkat agreed.
“No, not bad. My grandmother saved Us Weekly — I was on the cover of it,” Shawkat remembered of the time period. “There was a really bad photo, it was him and me being like ‘ooh!’ And they were like ‘Who’s the new girl?’ And my Arabic grandmother [was excited].”
She joked that her career accomplishments meant nothing to her grandmother compared to the thought that she could be dating Pitt.
“I was like ‘I’ve been working in film for 30 years, you’ve never seen anything, but you love this,’” Shawkat said, adding that when she was on the magazine cover her grandmother felt like, “I made it.”
Alia Shawkat. Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Cohen laughed, “Again, it’s only cred for you, as far as I’m concerned.”
Shawkat was in total agreement, adding, “Totally. He’s great, he’s the coolest.”
Shawkat and Pitt, 62, sparked romance speculation in November 2019 when they were spotted at the L.A. on Fire art exhibition in Los Angeles.
A source exclusively told Us at the time that the pair were “just friends” and not, in fact, dating.
One month later, Pitt told The New York Times, “I don’t know how many women they’ve said I’ve been dating the last two or three years, and none of it’s true.”
Still, Pitt and Shawkat couldn’t escape the rumors in 2020, either. After they were seen together at a Thundercat show at the Wiltern in Los Angeles and a local In-N-Out that March, rumors about their connection reignited.
A source, however, told Us in May 2020 that Shawkat was a close friend that Pitt had been leaning on after his divorce from Angelina Jolie in 2016.
“They have an incredibly tight bond and trust each other implicitly,” the insider said at the time. “Alia’s been a wonderful help for Brad during this major transition.”
Brad Pitt. Henry Nicholls/AFP/Getty Images
A second source explained that Pitt and Shawkat were “hanging out plenty” amid the coronavirus pandemic because the actors only lived “about 10 minutes away from each other.”
“It’s all very organic and easy,” the insider said, insisting their friendship was platonic.
Shawkat initially spoke out about the speculation in June 2020, telling Vulture, “We’re not dating. We’re just friends.”
Once the rumors fizzled out, Shawkat reflected on the wild ride she’d been on, revealing that Pitt was totally unaware of the public’s fascination in their bond.
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“It was so weird. Now it’s like a weird dream, where I’m like, ‘Did that happen?’” Shawkat told The New Yorker in January 2022 of the whirlwind rumors. “[Brad] had no awareness of it at all. Which is so funny. Because he doesn’t read that s***.”
The Search Party alum recalled telling Pitt about the stories, saying, “I was like, ‘You know everyone thinks we’re dating? And there’s this whole thing, and I’m being followed.’”
She remembered Pitt responding, “‘I’m sorry. It happens. If you hang out with me, it happens.’ He had no awareness of it at all.”
Pitt, for his part, began dating Ines de Ramon in late 2022, quietly the chatter surrounding him and Shawkat for good.
Shawkat, meanwhile, has kept her dating life private throughout her career. In November 2023, she welcomed her first baby.
