John Krasinski Told Emily Blunt What Not to Wear on Their Second Date. Thanks, I Hate It!

We really need to hold an intervention with celebrities to tell them what we’ll actually find charming and romantic about their relationships, because they seem to have no idea. For instance, I am never going to forget Chris Pratt’s 2021 anniversary post, in which he wrote of his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger: “She helps me with everything. In return, periodically, I open a jar of pickles.” Cool, dude!

And now, just as seared into my brain is Emily Blunt’s recent appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where she told the story of how, after her first date with John Krasinski in 2008, the Office actor gave her some tips of what not to wear if she wanted a second date. Presumably, we’re supposed to find this quirky and cute, but… I don’t love it!

The anecdote arose after Colbert asked Blunt to name one item she owned that she should throw out. “A really terrible, old, royal blue velvet jacket,” Blunt replied. “I don’t wear it, but I wore it on John and I’s first date, and I have not thrown it out. It’s such an awful jacket.”

So why has she kept it, 14 years later? Blunt said that the jacket holds specific sentimental value to her, as it was the object of said sassy little quip from Krasinski. “He just sent me a memo going: ‘Don’t wear the jacket, and you’ll get another date,’” Blunt recalled.

I’m willing to give Krasinski the benefit of the doubt because surely the memo was a gag. But I still don’t love it! Men already have too much to say about women’s fashion and what we should or shouldn’t wear for their entertainment, so even a tongue-in-cheek little memo is pretty audacious for me. Plus: You either like her or you don’t! If you don’t want Emily Blunt at her hideous-blue-velvet-jacket, you don’t deserve her at her Oscar’s red carpet look.

And in any case, based on what Blunt and Krasinski have previously disclosed about their first date, it doesn’t seem like he gave her any particular reason to dress up. In 2018, Krasinski told The Hollywood Reporter that for their first date, they ate pizza at his apartment. Sounds like a perfect occasion for an ugly blazer to me.

But, look, at the end of the day, who am I to judge?? Blunt and Krasinski have been married for 12 years and have two children; meanwhile, I remain caught in a perpetual loop of first dates, waiting for even one of these suitors to care enough about me to send a “memo” joking about going on a second date. Nonetheless, I hope Blunt doesn’t feel compelled to pick her outfits based on the opinion of a man whose greatest contribution to fashion is a three-hole punch Halloween costume.