Stop the Clocks: Phoebe Bridgers and Paul Mescal Are Engaged

UPDATE, 5:40 pm: The Guardian updated their story late Sunday afternoon to clarify that Mescal and Bridgers are “reportedly engaged.” Mescal did not officially confirm this news to the site.

At a stupid party with my stupid friends over the weekend, we played a stupid game in which we went around the circle naming our celebrity crush. Yes I am too old to be doing this, and yes I blurted out Paul Mescal.

So it brings me absolutely no pleasure to report that the Normal People actor and the reply guy of my dreams are engaged to be married. The Guardian broke the news very casually on Sunday, burying it in the fifth paragraph of their interview with Mescal—in parentheses, no less, in the context of him explaining why he quit social media:

“I thought it’s either get off the bus now or stay on it, and I wanted to get off. In 10 years I might rue the day I threw out my social media, but look, it just is what it is.” (Mescal did, however, stay on long enough to exchange charged messages on Twitter and Instagram with the musician Phoebe Bridgers; the pair are now engaged.)

Bridgers and Mescal had what Elle correctly deemed “the meet cute of the century”—they met on Twitter, after Bridgers fan-girled over Mescal’s performance in Normal People like the rest of us.

Like any ordinary human being who binged Normal People during lockdown, Bridgers took to Twitter to share her obsession for the show, naturally. The singer wrote “finished normal people and now I’m sad and horny oh wait”. Shooting his shot, Mescal responded “I’m officially dead.” And so are we. But wait, it gets better. Bridgers flirtatiously replied “nooo don’t die your so talented aha”.

They made their red carpet debut a year ago, and now she gets to be velcro’d to him for life. Or until divorce, or whatever.

I want to hate Bridgers now, I really do, but I can’t. She is fucking great. She shared her own personal abortion story to advocate for the right to control our own bodies. She and Maggie Rogers just raised tens of thousands of dollars for abortion funds with their cover of “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls. And Bridgers recently stood up for Amber Heard after the actor’s long, drawn-out legal battle with Johnny Depp, whom she accused of domestic abuse.

“If Amber Heard exhibited any neurotic behavior, it was held against her,” Bridgers said in an interview with Teen Vogue. “Then Johnny Depp, out of his mouth, admitted some of the most violent, crazy shit in court, and it’s somehow like, people aren’t surprised?”

“I think that there’s been this falsehood—and I think queer people are included in this—of having to be the perfect victim, or the perfect survivor, or the perfect representation for your marginalized community,” Bridgers added.

I now regrettably must congratulate these lovebirds on their engagement and mourn what could have been with Paul and me, had he ever seen any of my thirsty tweets.