Reports claiming Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley have allegedly split have sent people down a rabbit hole of their past relationships, and naturally, that means the Lorde rumours have resurfaced too. View this post on Instagram A post shared by jack antonoff (@jackantonoff) Despite years of speculation, Jack Antonoff and Lorde have always maintained they were never romantically involved. Their close friendship and creative partnership became the subject of endless gossip around the release of Melodrama, but both repeatedly denied there was ever anything going on between them. The renewed interest also has people revisiting passages from Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick, where she describes Antonoff growing close to an unnamed “teen pop star” while the pair were still together. Jack first met Lorde at a Grammy afterparty in 2014, when she was just 17. The pair quickly became one of pop’s most celebrated creative duos, with Antonoff co-writing and producing Lorde’s 2017 album Melodrama before returning to work on 2021’s Solar Power. Over the years, Lorde has spoken highly of Antonoff, previously describing him as one of the most supportive and eccentric people she knows. Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock The speculation began after Antonoff and Lena Dunham ended their long-term relationship in late 2017. Because Jack and Lorde had spent so much time writing, recording and touring together, people started questioning whether their relationship had become more than professional. Some theories even suggested the pair had become involved before Antonoff and Dunham officially split. In 2018, Antonoff wrote on Twitter that he resented seeing some of the most meaningful friendships in his life reduced to “heteronormative gossip”. Lorde also addressed it directly during an Instagram Live, saying: “Guys… Jack and I are not dating, for the last time. I love him, he’s awesome. But we’re not dating!” Now, following the alleged split from Qualley, attention has once again turned to Dunham’s memoir. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) In Famesick, Dunham writes that Antonoff’s professional relationship with a “teen pop star” started “striking an odd note”. She recalls FaceTiming him while she was visiting her grandmother and finding him “in the recording studio in our apartment, where he was ensconced with a teen pop star I was too oblivious to be jealous of.” Elsewhere, she says Antonoff spent much of his time “locked in a room with a teen pop star whose needs seemed as massive and complex as my own, and who called me ‘Aunt Lena’ when I hobbled into the kitchen with my walker to grab another bottle of green tea.” She also remembers coming home after a bone density test to find the singer “sprawled across our sectional couch, weeping into Jack’s lap as he told her that ‘your teens are for experimenting’ in a tone so comforting, it almost brought tears to my eyes.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lorde (@lorde) Dunham added: “It had been so long since he’d spoken to me with that kind of expansive generosity.” Although she never names the artist, readers have long suspected the passages refer to Lorde, given Antonoff’s role in creating Melodrama and the dating rumours that followed. In the memoir’s epilogue, Dunham also reflects on Antonoff’s relationship with Margaret Qualley, writing that seeing paparazzi photos of the couple together left her unexpectedly emotional. “He’d won the friend that I wanted, so when I wept like a child on the first afternoon I saw a paparazzi picture of them kissing on the Brooklyn Bridge, I knew that nobody would understand why I was so upset, that they’d assume it was because I was jealous of her, and that made me weep even harder,” she wrote. For all the latest film and TV updates and hot takes, like our Facebook page. Featured image credit: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock Post navigation Next storyPrevious story
