Actress Alia Shawkat, 37, is “just friends” with Brad Pitt, she declared on Watch What Happens Live.
Shawkat was asked about the age-gap relationship during a joint interview with her The Wrong Girls co-star Kristen Stewart, after years of being caught on camera hanging out with the Oscar winner, 62. Andy Cohen asked her about the constant rumors on Sunday: “How did that come to be?”
“This is my favorite question to get asked,” Shawkat began sarcastically. “He’s just my friend. We became friends; 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.”
As for the rumors, the mother of one said she hasn’t done anything to truly inspire them. “Everyone thought we were dating just because if you stand next to him everyone thinks you’re dating,” she said.
In 2019, the pair were both spotted together having dinner and attending an art show, which fueled speculation of a romance. A source told People at the time that they were “absolutely just friends.” Prior to that meetup, they were also spotted attending a comedy show together on separate occasions.
Shawkat said the association earned her some cache in her family. “My grandmother saved the Us Weekly we were on. I was on the cover” of the magazine story teasing the Pitt dating rumors.
Shawkat has also drawn the ire of social media users who aren’t pleased to see the actress out and about with the star, as he was accused of battering his ex-wife, fellow Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, and several of their adopted children in a lawsuit she filed anonymously in 2016.
Her grandmother, on the other hand, was starstruck to hear the rumors, even though the actress has several notable credits, including playing Maeby Fünke in the Jason Bateman sitcom Arrested Development for all five seasons.
“But the Us Weekly… That one was like, I made it,” she quipped.
Pitt drew scrutiny following the allegations of abuse made by Jolie, to whom he was married from 2014 to 2016. The actress alleged that Pitt grabbed her by the head and shoulders and pushed her into a bathroom wall during an altercation on a private plane with their children. She also alleged that he choked one child and struck another during the same altercation.
He drew more criticism earlier this month for announcing that he was drinking again, following his sobriety reveal in 2019. “I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” he told Esquire earlier this month. “In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times, went, ‘Yep, nope, not good for me.’ Not in big quantities.”
Shawkat had no qualms about supporting the star during her interview with Cohen, however, which earned her some scathing comments from social media users.
“Are we still pretending that Brad Pitt isn’t an abusive POS?” one wrote on YouTube.
The actress told Cohen that Pitt is “great” and “the coolest.” Commented another on the video, “He’s very cool? Uhhh 🤮”
