In my opinion, the most surprising celebrity couple to walk the filthy beige carpet at last night’s Met Gala was not James Corden and his omelet wife (why was James Corden there?), nor Jared Leto and his furry suit (just why), but the very private Anna Wintour and Bill Nighy. Their coupledom has been assumed by multiple gossip outlets — including the New York Post, Just Jared, and E! News — based primarily on the fact of Nighy’s presence: Wintour doesn’t typically make her entrance with a date, unless you count her daughter. But now here are the unnamed sources, supposedly friends of the Vogue editor-in-chief, telling the Post they’re “thrilled” that she “finally” went public with the Love Actually guy.
Finally! Finally?? Please keep in mind that neither party has confirmed anything with words, and one camp is saying please calm down. “Bill and Anna have simply been great friends for two decades,” Nighy’s rep told The Independent in a post-gala statement. “They are not in a relationship.”
Nonetheless, rumors about these two have been percolating for years, or since the paparazzi spotted them on an apparent date in Rome. At the time (August 2021), the Daily Mail reported that Nighy bought Wintour roses in a “loving gesture” and that the pair looked “the picture of happiness as they gazed longingly at each other” across their table at Pierluigi. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not really getting “longing” from the approximately 137 photos of the meal that the Mail published, though they did appear to touch at least once and to enjoy one another’s company.
As The Hollywood Reporter (which is also calling this a “relationship”) notes, Wintour and Nighy have known each other for a long time — since at least 2010, when they were seen sitting together at London Fashion Week, and when Wintour was with investor Shelby Bryan. But Wintour and Bryan broke up sometime before 2020, while Nighy and his ex-wife, Diana Quick, divorced in 2008 after two-plus decades of marriage. Still, questions about the nature of the Nighy-Wintour acquaintance arose back in 2018. “Obviously I have nothing to say about that,” Nighy said, per Just Jared. “There are a lot of rumors about me and probably about Anna Wintour.”
Those rumors escalated after Wintour attended a special Manhattan screening of Nighy’s film, Living, in December, and put on what the Mail described as a “cozy display.” (Wintour and Nighy stood next to each other.) As we all know, there is only one way for two famous people to put an are-they-aren’t-they to bed, and that is to give us a little kiss. Chop chop!