In a world of celebrity conspiracy theorists and fake news, Tom Hiddleston would like to make a point of clarification. The Fourth of July tank top that read “I ♥ T.S.”—the one that added so much fuel to the “Hiddleswift is a P.R. move” fire because fans and much of the celebrity media alike couldn’t believe their eyes—was “a joke among friends,” according to the man himself.
In a new GQ profile on the actor, he told writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “The truth is, it was the Fourth of July and a public holiday and we were playing a game and I slipped and hurt my back. And I wanted to protect the graze from the sun and said, ‘Does anyone have a T-shirt?’ And one of her friends said, ‘I’ve got this.’”
When “a friend” (which friend? Was it Blake Lively? Was it Gigi Hadid? Hm?) presented the “I ♥ T.S.” tank that is burned in our retinas still to this day, “We all laughed about it. It was a joke.”
This moment along with others—like a photo series of Hiddleston and Taylor Swift kissing on the rocks by her Rhode Island home and taking a stroll with his family on an English beach—inspired headlines like “A Paparazzo Explains How Staged Celebrity Photos Really Work” and “There’s a Theory That Taylor Swift and Tom Hiddleston Are Just Shooting a Music Video”, which, in turn, tore through Twitter, Facebook, et. al. He would like to be excluded from this narrative (a phrase for which Swift is now, pardon the pun, “Famous”) half a year later.
“The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context,” he told GQ. “Nobody had the context for that story. And I’m still trying to work out a way of having a personal life and protecting it, but also without hiding. So the hardest thing is that that was a joke among friends on the Fourth of July.”
Hiddleston goes on to mention Swift the person, too, not just the Swiftian whirling vortex of press he found himself in last summer. “I only know the woman I met. She’s incredible,” he said, insisting they were relatively public compared to other celebrity couples because they were attempting normal relationship things. “[W]e decided to go out for dinner, we decided to travel.”
Considering that there are far more dangerous conspiracy theories out there these days, it feels pretty great to lay this one to rest. And isn’t this the stuff that makes up most conspiracy theories? The truth is a little more boring and a little more bungling. You hurt your back and you have to wear a T-shirt to protect your English skin from America’s summer sun. You pick the one you pick for comedy. The world goes nuts.
