Matty Healy’s mom, the English actor and TV personality Denise Welch, barely tried to hold back when discussing her son’s brief, tumultuous relationship with Taylor Swift on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live.
Expert orchestrator of mess that he is, Andy Cohen pointedly asked Welch about her reaction to Swift’s last album, The Tortured Poets Department, which contained several songs about her time with Healy (and the media firestorm it caused). Welch began her response diplomatically, saying, “Obviously, on pain of death, can I talk about that episode?” before proceeding to, more or less, talk about that episode: “But not being her mother-in-law is a role that I am glad that I lost.”
We’ll just caveat right here that, if you read that second sentence carefully, you’ll realize Welch got her double negatives mixed up. But let’s just say her tone left little doubt over what she actually meant, eliciting gasps from both Cohen and the audience.
In extremely British fashion, Welch quickly couched her comment by insisting, “Not that I have anything against her at all! It was just — it was tricky.”
She went on to suggest that Healy and others were “not allowed to say anything” about the relationship or break-up, but then Swift wrote “a whole album about it.” Welch then said, “Matty has taken it all in completely good grace. He’s very happy with his amazing fiancée, Gabriella [who uses the stage name, Gabriette], who is gorgeous. So, we’ve moved on.”
A rep for Swift did not immediately return a request for comment.
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Healy, for his part, has actually said a few things (although in often somewhat vague terms) about his time with Swift. And as for whether he had any songs about the relationship or break-up planned, Healy said on the Doomscroll podcast last year that he wasn’t interested in mining those experiences for the next 1975 album.
“I think that that’s an obvious thing to draw from. And I’m just not interested in it,” he said, adding: “The idea of making a record about something that personally happened to me, that by the time I put it out is gonna be like two years old, I see people doing that as well, and it’s not interesting.”
