Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples (or, occasionally, friendship pairs) that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
It feels like just yesterday I was expressing my regret-tinged admiration for Meryl Streep and her longtime sculptor husband Don Gummer’s divorce, but as I really should have known, you can’t keep La Streep down: The legendary actor was spotted this week grabbing dinner at an Italian restaurant in Santa Monica with none other than Martin Short. Yes, they enact romance opposite one another on Only Murders in the Building and could easily have been discussing next season’s plot or planning a gift for the crew together, but…I die!
This isn’t the first time rumors about Streep and Short have circulated; after prompting from People last month, Short’s rep told the outlet that the pair were “just very good friends, nothing more.” Okay, I want to respect what I’m hearing, but…I’ve heard that before? From celebrities who turned out to be in love? Short repeated that the two were “very close friends” during an appearance on Bill Maher’s podcast, which, again, should be interpreted as denial, but I’m seeing it as somehow textually linked to Mr. Darcy from Bridget Jones’s Diary insisting that he “likes Bridget very much, just as she is.” Sometimes the simplest things are the most romantic!
Whether Streep and Short are dating or not, I do feel it’s time to embrace Short as the sex symbol that, at 73 years of age, he richly deserves to be. Just take a look at this photo, taken on his night out with Streep in Santa Monica:
Photo: Courtesy of Backgrid
I mean, have you ever seen a more caught-in-headlights-yet-perfectly-tousled expression? This picture is giving me strong f*ckboy vibes (in a not-bad way, for once), but Short has always come across as the opposite of a player. He has spoken about the loss of his late wife, Nancy Dolman, to cancer in absolutely beautiful terms, telling People in 2019: “Our marriage was a triumph, so it’s tough. She died in 2010, but I still communicate with her all the time. It’s, ‘Hey, Nan,’ you know? How would she react to this decision or that, especially regarding our three kids.” I’m weeping, but this elegance and warmth also remind me of the way Streep has referred to her own marriage. Let’s just say that if I were the Parent Trap twins, I would be setting them up.
Ultimately, whether Short and Streep are dating or just friends who are going to have this story forwarded to them by their PR people and laugh their asses off about it via text (am I just drafting fanfic now?), there’s one thing we can agree on: Streep’s face in the latter photo with Short looks basically the same as it did in that famous shot of her on the New York subway, and it simply isn’t fair. (Meryl, follow Marina Abramovic’s example and drop a skin care line—or at least the skin care routine!)
