Joe Alwyn Subtly Responds to ‘The Black Dog’ Rumors in First Comments on the Taylor Swift Breakup

As usual, Joe Alwyn didn’t want to talk about Taylor Swift in his new interview with The Sunday Times.

“I understand people’s curiosity,” the 33-year-old actor said during his conversation with Nathaniel Goldberg, which was published on June 15. After all, Alwyn dated one of the most famous women in the world for over six years and allegedly inspired multiple songs on her most recent album, The Tortured Poets Department. Still, Alwyn managed to avoid commenting on the breakup for over a year after the news went public in April 2023.

Alwyn touched on the fallout from their split when asked if he’s listened to Tortured Poets. “This isn’t a direct answer to your question,” he prefaced before gathering his thoughts. “I would hope that anyone and everyone can empathize and understand the difficulties that come with the end of a long, loving, fully committed relationship of over six and a half years. That is a hard thing to navigate. What is unusual and abnormal in this situation is that, one week later, it’s suddenly in the public domain and the outside world is able to weigh in.”

He continued, “So you have something very real suddenly thrown into a very unreal space: tabloids, social media, press, where it is then dissected, speculated on, pulled out of shape beyond recognition. And the truth is, to that last point, there is always going to be a gap between what is known and what is said. I have made my peace with that.”

One thing that may fit into that “gap” is the truth behind the Tortured Poets track “The Black Dog.” Taylor Swift laments a painful breakup in the song’s lyrics, singing, “And so I watch as you walk into some bar called The Black Dog and pierce new holes in my heart.” As it turns out, The Black Dog is the name of a real-life London pub, and the bar’s staff didn’t miss the opportunity to capitalize on the moment.

“I don’t want to give too much away [but] we do have a certain blonde regular who frequents,” the social media manager told Sky News in April, implying that Alwyn was very familiar with their establishment. His interview with The Sunday Times, however, suggests the opposite.

“I’ve never been to Vauxhall,” Alwyn said of the area in London where The Black Dog is located after Goldberg joked that it likely wouldn’t make the actor’s list of pub recommendations. Goldberg noted that he said this with a smile that “hints that there is more to say.”

While Alwyn didn’t directly deny inspiring the song and it’s possible Swift chose a random pub name, this answer does poke some holes in the popular theory—and that’s all we’re going to get out of the famously guarded actor for now.

“As everyone knows, we together—both of us, mutually—decided to keep the more private details of our relationship private. It was never something to commodify and I see no reason to change that now,” Alwyn also said in the interview. “And, look, this is also a little over a year ago now and I feel fortunate to be in a really great place in my life, professionally and personally. I feel really good.”