Alia Shawkat is revisiting one of the strangest chapters of her celebrity life nearly seven years after a friendship with Brad Pitt unexpectedly turned into months of romance headlines.
The Arrested Development actress addressed the speculation during an Aug. 16 appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, where Andy Cohen admitted that he had been fascinated by the old rumors. Shawkat’s answer was straightforward: “Um, no, he’s just my friend.”
She explained that director Spike Jonze introduced them and that she and Pitt connected through a shared interest in art. Their repeated public outings beginning in late 2019 were enough to fuel dating stories, even though Shawkat denied at the time that anything romantic was happening.
This time, she was able to joke about an episode she once described as overwhelming. She even recalled that her grandmother kept a tabloid cover linking her to Pitt despite showing far less interest in Shawkat’s decades of acting work.
Shawkat Says Pitt Was Always ‘Just My Friend’
Cohen raised the old romance rumors while Shawkat appeared alongside her The Wrong Girls costar Kristen Stewart and the movie’s writer-director, Dylan Meyer. “I was obsessed with the Brad Pitt dating rumors,” Cohen told her. “Me too,” Stewart added. “I was enthralled.”
“This is my favorite question to get asked,” Shawkat joked before setting the record straight. “Um, no, he’s just my friend,” she said. “We became friends. Spike Jonze introduced us. It sounds all very chic and Hollywood.” As Entertainment Weekly reported, Shawkat said Pitt’s enthusiasm for art helped turn the introduction into a friendship.
“We met, and he’s really into art and he’s very cool and we became friends,” she said. Shawkat also offered a simple explanation for why being seen together produced so much attention.
“Everyone thought we were dating, because if you stand next to him everyone thinks you’re dating,” she said, joking that the assumption apparently extended “even” to Pitt’s own mother. Cohen told her there were worse people to be romantically linked to. Shawkat agreed and described Pitt as “great” and “the coolest.”
The Rumors Became Much Bigger Than Their Friendship
The speculation began after Shawkat and Pitt were repeatedly seen together beginning in fall 2019. Among their outings were the “L.A. on Fire” exhibition at Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles and an opera performance at the Hollywood Bowl. They were subsequently photographed or spotted together on other occasions, keeping the supposed romance in entertainment headlines into 2020.
E! News reported in 2020 that Shawkat had already dismissed the speculation by saying, “We’re not dating. We’re just friends.” She also described the sudden attention surrounding her as overwhelming. Before being linked to Pitt, Shawkat was not accustomed to paparazzi following her daily movements.
By 2022, she was even more candid about what the experience had felt like. In an interview with The New Yorker, Shawkat said paparazzi followed her to her studio and photographed ordinary moments in her life. What particularly frustrated her was the realization that being romantically linked to an older male movie star had generated more widespread attention than the acting career she had built since childhood.
“At the time, it was not fun at all,” she said. Shawkat called the situation “ironic and gross and stupid,” while emphasizing that her frustration was with the phenomenon surrounding the rumor.
Her Grandmother Kept the Tabloid Cover
During her new Watch What Happens Live appearance, she recalled that her grandmother had saved an Us Weekly issue featuring Shawkat and Pitt. “There was a really bad photo,” she said, recalling a cover that presented her as the mysterious new woman in Pitt’s life.
The attention apparently impressed her grandmother in a way Shawkat’s long film and television résumé had not. “I’ve been working in film for 30 years, you’ve never seen anything, but you love this,” Shawkat remembered telling her. Shawkat said she was embarrassed at the time and told her grandmother to throw it away.
Pitt Apparently Barely Knew the Rumors Existed
One of the more unusual parts of the story was how differently the publicity affected the two friends. Shawkat told The New Yorker that she eventually explained the frenzy directly to Pitt.
“You know everyone thinks we’re dating? And there’s this whole thing, and I’m being followed,” she recalled telling him. According to Shawkat, Pitt responded, “I’m sorry. It happens. If you hang out with me, it happens.”
“He had no awareness of it at all,” she said. Pitt also addressed the broader pattern of romance speculation around him in a 2019 interview with The New York Times. He said numerous women had been linked to him over the previous few years and “none of it’s true.”