In the wise words of the 1997 Anastasia film, “Paris holds the key to your heart”, and indeed, when a burgeoning celebrity couple strolls out and officiates their relationship on the steps of Crazy Horse Paris, one might as well believe it. However, this time around, it was none other than the original California Girl, Katy Perry, with a red rose in one hand and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s arm in the other. It is safe to say that the internet had a field day. Previously, keyboard detectives spotted the couple at a few restaurants, and some paparazzi claimed to have captured them atop a cruise ship, yet all such notions were dismissed. Because really…Justin Trudeau, the diligent family man (recently divorced), and the world’s political heartthrob, fresh off his resignation from the Canadian seat, with the part-time 11-minute astronaut, and our childhood hitmaker? Seems far-fetched.

Elsewhere, the award shows’ favorite country-singer-Oscar-actress duo decided to drop a bomb on the internet after nineteen years of a seemingly perfect marriage. Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban walked into the limelight in 2006. Flashing cameras, flourishing careers for both of them, a budding family, and nearly twenty years of holy matrimony would suggest nothing could go quite wrong. Right? Wrong. September heralded news of their divorce over “irreconcilable differences”, which are assumed to have been related to the direction of each other’s work-life balance. Needless to say, it is always heartwrenching to see a long-term couple break up, especially one that people have always deemed their version of perfect.

But between all this, sparks have been flying on the forefront of the Republican Party at the University of Mississippi last week. Erika Kirk, the late Charlie Kirk’s widow, has been under fire over the course of the six weeks since she lost her husband: between becoming the CEO of the controversial Turning Point USA to not practicing a Jackie Kennedy-level of mourning for Charlie Kirk, the internet had a lot to say about how she is seemingly profiting off her husband’s death. Indeed, selling merchandise at a memorial would suggest so. However, all faces froze last Wednesday, when Erika gave a speech at a memorial of her late husband, honoring him, praising him, and then stating, “There is no one like my husband, no one could ever replace him…but I do see some similarities between my husband and Vice President JD”. As opinionated as this sentence may seem, I must concede that that is an insane statement to make in the first three months of widowhood, especially towards a married man. And, that too towards the married man who stepped onto the stage and embraced Erika with such warmth that the audience deemed it necessary to avert their eyes from the intimate scene. Now, the internet is always wilding, this we admit, but as the rightists of the Global North rally against Erika and JD Vance’s often inappropriate advances given each other’s precarious situations, to say the least, it does raise an important suspicion of the matter. Neither party involved in this very public display of intimacy is completely and utterly morally pure, this we admit.

More often than not, celebrity couplings are deduced by the digital paparazzi. Tom Holland and Zendaya’s relationship had been bet on a year before they appeared together; Cardi B and Offset’s repeated on-off dynamic, which included unfaithfulness by the latter, only had one ending. But this year, we were surprised. Sure, we had the usual news like Pete Davidson dating the next-hottest girl in the city, but witnessing politicians date fading singers, as silver-jubilee-cusp marriages fracture apart, and widows face Republican scorn, was definitely not on anyone's 2025 bingo card. The one thing all the above examples had in common, however, was the massive traction they garnered, reopening the world of scrutiny towards the public lives of celebrities, begging the question: Do celebrities want this scrutiny? Logic would dictate yes. Katy Perry’s fall from grace post her highly publicized and defamed space trip would seemingly be cushioned by her being positioned next to one of the world’s most (ex) respected diplomats. For the said diplomat, it feeds directly into Trudeau’s dreamboat image as he heads off with an eccentric popstar, helping to soften the glare he has received since January over internal party tensions. Nicole Kidman’s divorce has been attributed to the pressure of the celebrity life taking a strain on her marriage for years, a situation understandable given her involvement in at least one blockbuster a year. And of course, the Republicans of the USA have the usual slogan of ‘all press is good press’, including the Kirk-Vance assumptions. So is the only reason we did not see that coming, because the pop-culture gods like to play tricks on us to increase their worshipper count? Perhaps.