Month: November 2020

Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello first set off dating rumors with the release of their single “Señorita” last June, and there’s plenty of proof to show that when there’s smoke, there’s fire. In fact, the premiere of Netflix’s Shawn Mendes: In Wonder documentary dives further into the couple’s relationship. It follows Cabello’s own ode to their love, her second solo album Romance. “For the past, like, four years, just being friends and not being able to see each other very often to finally being able to be together, she was always there to look out for me as a human being,” Mendes says in the documentary. “She’s got my back, and I think that’s what your partner is for.”

Here, a look back at their relationship over the last year and a half, including how they emerged from the “just friends” stage and all those quarantine walks.

August 2015

The first photographic evidence of Mendes and Cabello meeting was at the 2015 Video Music Awards in Los Angeles. Cabello, who was still in Fifth Harmony at the time, posed for photos with Mendes at an after party for the show.

During Shawn Mendes: In Wonder, the couple recounts their first impressions of one another. “Camila, she was in Fifth Harmony and we were both opening my very first tour ever,” Mendes recalls. ” She was the act after me. I was the first in the lineup, with the shortest set, and then they went on. Five years ago, man.”

Cabello remembered Mendes as “super hyper-focused,” adding, “I never saw him that whole tour. He was constantly going in and out of his bus, playing guitar, writing songs with (frequent songwriting collaborator) Geoff (Warburton).”

September 2015

They reunited a few weeks later at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas.

At some point this year, the pair reconnected backstage at a Taylor Swift concert. Cabello explained in the Netflix documentary, “I went to his dressing room to say hi. And we, like, started writing this song. Then after that, we like, spent a lot of time with each other because we had the song together and we did a whole Jingle Ball tour together. And that’s really when the fucking saga started. I really liked him. I guess he liked me, but I don’t really know. “

November 2015

In November, the duo released “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” performing it together on The Tonight Show and beyond. During an interview with Elvis Duran, Cabello spoke about their professional relationship while recording the track together.

“That’s the cool part though, because we were so passionate about this song,” she said. “As artists, we’re both so invested in what we sing about that that makes the whole experience so much more intense.”

December 2015

The two then performed the single during KISS FM’s Jingle Ball show in Los Angeles, where the chemistry was…palpable.

June 2016

For the song, they ended up winning the award for Best Pop Video and Fan Favorite at the iHeartRadio Much Music Awards, going on stage to accept it together.

May 2017

After Cabello released her first single, “Crying in the Club,” Mendes tweeted out his support for his friend/collaborator, gushing over the song.

“Speechless.. goosebumps all over,” he tweeted. “you’re incredible.”

November 2017

Rumors that Mendes is dating Hailey Baldwin crop up, and the two eventually attend the 2018 Met Gala together wearing Tommy Hilfiger. Baldwin later went on to marry Justin Bieber, and Mendes revealed that he texted her a congratulations message.

“I texted Hailey the day of, and I said congrats,” he said in July 2018. “That’s what it is. I think everybody wants there to be more—there’s not.”

May 2018

Mendes released his third album, and while promoting it, fawned over Cabello in an interview with Zane Lowe.

“Oh my God, she is my favorite person in the whole world. I don’t think you’ll ever meet somebody who can feel emotion like her, in all aspects,” he said. “Her love for what she believed in was so powerful that it just kind of pushed me to like make an entire album out of inspiration of the one night.”

The pair then posed for photos with their mutual friend Taylor Swift at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards.

February 2019

Before the Grammys, Cabello shared a few photos of her and Mendes together writing, “so proud of this amazing human !!!!!! seems like yesterday we were just kids singing ed sheeran songs in the dressing room, now we’re kids trying not to throw up cause we’re at the Grammys!!!! i love you forever.”

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June 2019

Mendes and Cabello reunited to release their summer anthem “Señorita” and the accompanying sexy video. Rumors of a relationship immediately bubbled to the surface of the internet.

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Meanwhile, Cabello’s breakup with her boyfriend of over a year-and-a-half, Matthew Hussey, was reported by E! News.

“To my fans, if you really love me, please do not send people I love and care about hateful things,” she wrote on Instagram after the split was announced.

“You doing that really hurts me, and it’s so unnecessary and heavy and damaging to add more pain to pain. There’s a real person behind your tweets. You spamming them with hateful, insensitive things is really not funny, is causing all of us pain, and doesn’t all reflect the values I talk about.”

Mendes’s mom then chimed in on the inevitable dating rumors, adding fuel to the fire, leaving two heart-adorned emojis on a post of Mendes and Cabello on Cabello’s Instagram. Moms!

July 2019

The rumors then seemed to solidify after the two spent the Fourth of July holiday together this year acting…extremely couple-y.

“He was holding her at one point and they were staring into the ocean,” a source told E! News. “They both were smiling the entire time and Camilla was laughing a lot. They rarely mingled with other people and were together the entire evening. They were telling people they were a couple.”

A few days later, photos showed the two hugging in the wide-open public. The two went to brunch together a day after Cabello went to Mendes’s concert in Los Angeles.

“@shawnmendes you couldn’t be more amazing. Wow,” she wrote on Instagram before the show.

The next week the couple (it seems safe to call them that now) were getting very hot and heavy while in San Francisco, with plenty of cameras to document their public make outs and hand holding.

“They looked very much like a couple. You [could] see them making out at the table,” an source told Us Weekly. “They looked very into each other. Shawn and Camila were splitting pancakes. Then after, they started kissing. He had his arm around her a lot of the meal, and they were chatting—not too much laughing, but they looked in love. They were there around 10:30 a.m. and not too many people noticed who they were.”

Cabello continued following Mendes on tour throughout the month. In late July, the two were filmed kissing in Florida and made a splash (literally) when photos came out of them kissing in both the ocean and a pool in Miami Beach. E! reported that Cabello’s family was at Mendes’ Miami show with her.

During the month, E! and Entertainment Tonight ran comprehensive reports from sources on what the status of their relationship is.

E! published its report first. Its source explained that their romance was moving fast because they were close for years before. “It already feels to them like they’ve been together for a lot longer than they have,” the source started. “They’ve known each other and been a part of each other’s lives for a while so it’s all very natural and moving quickly.”

That’s partly why Cabello started following Mendes on his tour, the source added.

“The timing wasn’t right before but it is right right now,” the source said. “They are going for it without holding back. This step in their relationship is exciting for them both. They haven’t wanted to be apart at all. It’s 24/7 and all out at this point.”

Entertainment Tonight ran its report the day after Mendes and Cabello’s Miami Beach makeout photos came out. Its source explained that Cabello and Mendes hadn’t intended for their relationship to become what it was blossoming into.

“Shawn and Camila originally were just enjoying spending time together and having a summer fling,” its source said. “Camila had just got out of a relationship and Shawn was in the middle of a massive tour. But Shawn and Camila have really fallen for one another.”

August 2019

In an interview with Variety, Cabello hints at the role her relationship has played in her recent music. “Falling in love is like an infinite amount of levels and layers and angles,” she told the outlet. “I fell in love and just opened up. Everything was written in present moment.”

In the same piece she offered, “I’ve known Shawn for such a long time, and it’s so much fun getting to work and do things with somebody who means a lot to you.”

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For Mendes’ 21st birthday, Mendes was by his side. The two were photographed walking the West Village together after lunch at the restaurant, Jack’s Wife Freda. E! reported that the couple attended a party for Mendes at Harriet’s Rooftop & Lounge at the 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge. A source said the event was “very low key but [Mendes] did get loose with his friends. Shawn and Camila arrived together holding hands and everyone inside cheered for them as they walked in.”

The insider went on to say, “Shawn was having fun playing beer pong with his friends and had a smile on his face the entire night. Camila was by his side the majority of the night and they looked really cute together. They took photos together and were on the beer pong table together at one point. Camila also planted a huge kiss on Shawn during the night and it was super cute.”

Cabello also shared a throwback photo of the couple to Instagram. She even dropped the L word in the caption, writing, “Happy birthday to this magic human, I love you!!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️.”

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Towards the end of the month, the pair seemed to take their summer romance even more pubic. On August 19, they were spotted kissing during dinner at Montreal’s Cafe Aunja.

On August 23, Cabello was ever the supportive girlfriend at Mendes’ Brooklyn concert. Per anUs Weekly source, “Camila came out a little more than halfway through Shawn’s concert at the back of the floor on a raised platform. When Shawn introduced his song ‘Fallin’ All in You,’ he ended with, ‘This one is for my Mami!’ and he pointed to Camila.” They were also seen making out at Extra Virgin restaurant the same day.

The VMAs marked the first major event the duo attended since becoming a high-profile celebrity couple. At the awards show they won the award for Best Collaboration and displayed some major PDA, despite walking the red carpet separately.

But the only thing anyone could talk about was Mendes and Cabello’s steamy performance of “Señorita,” which catapulted to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart shortly after. The entire performance was filled with chemistry, but it was the almost-kiss at the end that got the likes of Taylor Swift and Sophie Turner excited.

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Both Cabello and Mendes thanked fans on Instagram for their love and support, with Mendes sharing photos of the couple holding hands backstage.

Around this time, Cabello and Mendes were apparently living together in the same West Village apartment. “At this moment in time, during the summer of whatever you want to name this summer, during ‘Señorita’ and ‘If I Can’t Have You,’ Camila and I are staying in an apartment in New York City for the very first time alone,” Mendes said in his 2020 Netflix doc, adding, “And making eggs and trying to figure out how to use a Keurig. Normal things, you know? This is really cool to just be like a 21-year-old guy.”

September 2019

Mendes and Cabello’s relationship remained looking strong publicly. The two were spotted kissing while on a stroll through Toronto.

Then, Cabello took a major step in her relationship, telling ELLE that she’d fallen in love this year…and making it clear the person she’s in love with is Mendes.

“Honestly, this past year and a half was the first time I really experienced falling in love with another person. I think there is so much more depth to love when you know you are in it with another person. You have so much more to say—I think that’s what makes me emotional,” she said. “I’ve loved people from afar, but falling in love with someone and having feelings for someone but they don’t know…. It’s different.”

She also explained in ELLE’s October issue that public interest about her and Mendes was less important to her than their private happiness.

“I don’t know; people can say whatever they want to say,” Cabello said. “They can speculate, but at the same time, we are going to live our own lives, enjoy it, and fall for each other like nobody is watching. That is how I want to live. I never want to open the door for people to feel like they are involved. Like I said, I want it to be mine and [his]. That’s why I’m so tight-lipped about it: because I want to protect it.”

The couple also took time to showcase their love via a now-infamous Instagram video. In it, the two musicians comedically clear up rumors about their kissing style.

“So we saw on Twitter and stuff you guys saying stuff about the way were kissing and how it looks weird, like we kiss like fish,” Mendes said in the video.

“It really hurt our feelings,” Cabello added.

“So we just want to show you how we really kiss,” Mendes said, before the two launched into goofily making out.

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Shortly after, while at LAX airport, Mendes was asked whether his and Cabello’s relationship was fake, considering the strategic timing of their single and burgeoning romance.

“Look, one last thing, some people say that it’s a publicity stunt, and you say?” the paparazzo asked.

“We’re definitely not a publicity stunt,” Mendes replied.

When asked whether he’d met his girlfriend’s family he responded, “Camila’s parents I’ve known for a long time.”

October 2019

After the PDA-filled video, Mendes and Cabello became less tight-lipped about their blossoming romance. On UK’s Capital Breakfast radio show, Cabello said, “We’re pretty happy. I really, really love him a lot.”

She also gave insight into how the pair turned from friends into something more. “There was a period where we didn’t hang out as much just because we were both busy, and this song was really fun because we got to just hang out again like we did on the song we did before, ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer,'” she said. “Which was when we got really close….We were like ‘oh yay, we get to be pals and just hang out!’”

After that, she spoke to The Sun‘s Dan Wootton about the origins of their relationship—and the anxiety that accompanied it since they were close friends before they dated. “It’s almost more scary because you have more to lose,” she said. “When you first start dating a person and you know nothing about them, there’s less at risk there. I think when you fall in love with somebody you’ve known for a long time, there’s more at stake.”

“But it also feels more special because it feels like the love story you see in the movies of people who have known each other for a long time but been too stupid to realize it or say it and then it happens—and that’s beautiful too,” she added.

Cabello also admitted that she was attracted to Mendes from the beginning. “Definitely there were feelings, but I think we were just too young to know what to do with them,” she said. “The thing I’ve always loved about Shawn so much is that he just radiates this goodness,” she added. “He’s always been so kind.”

Next, it was Mendes’ turn to kiss and tell. During a fan Q&A, he was asked about a typical date with Cabello. “Camila and I will basically wake up and find the nearest coffee we can find,” he began. “She’ll have, basically, half a coffee and I’ll have, like, three. We’re always in different countries and cities when we hang out with each other. Probably find some food, then an hour later we’d be like, ‘Are you hungry?’ and we’ll eat again. Probably watch a movie, Tangled. She loves Tangled.”

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When asked his favorite topic to discuss, Cabello came up again. “I don’t know. Camila is so good at coming up with random topics,” he said. “One time we were having dinner and she pulled out this phone and a list on this phone was like, ‘What would you do if it was the last day on earth?’”

During an interview with ITV’s Lorraine, Cabello disclosed that a few tracks on her upcoming album Romance would address her romance with Mendes. “Towards the end there were [songs about Mendes], yeah, yeah.” She also confirmed that things between the two were better than ever. “I’ve known him for such a long time and I don’t know, he just feels like home to me,” she said, via Entertainment Tonight. “Yeah, I’m really happy.”

By the end of the month, Mendes had shared a sweet of snap of he and Cabello kissing to Instagram. It was simply captioned with, “🖤.”

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November 2019

Entertainment Tonight reported that Cabello revealed where she and Mendes had their first date and kiss. The pair was in San Francisco, where they were spotted making out on July 12. Previously, Mendes said, “We haven’t been dating for that long. We have been dating since July 4th officially,” which means they could have differing opinions on the date of their first official outing as a couple.

The couple’s PDA tour continued, smooching court side at the Los Angeles Clippers and the Toronto Raptors game at Staples Center on November 12. No kiss cam required.

Six days later, they treated paparazzi to some kissing while dining at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica.

Later in the month, Rolling Stone published a profile of Cabello where she talked about the origins of her love story with Mendes. She revealed that while working on the 2015 song “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” they initially connected. She told the outlet:

“I really bonded with him as more than a friend. I think he did, too, but we were both really young, and he was experiencing the pressures of his career. I don’t think we knew what to do with those feelings. It was this awkward thing where we both liked each other, but we weren’t together. It was just weird. An energy was there from the beginning, but after that song, we didn’t spend as much time together. Our paths just didn’t cross in that way romantically until we started hanging out again and writing. For me, it just brought it back.”

The American Music Awards brought some classic Mendes and Cabello behavior. They kissed from the front row, performed “Señorita” up to the point of kissing before stopping, and won the award for Collaboration of the Year.

December 2019

On December 6, Cabello released her album Romance, which as the title would suggest, features a lot of relationship talk. Ahead of the release, Mendes told Ellen DeGeneres while on her show, that the record was in fact “about being in love,” adding,”I was basically completely single for 20 years, and it was like the intensity and adrenaline of my life was in the studio, writing about an emotion that I wanted whereas this time, it’s just been a lot that has happened and I’ve fallen in love and out of love and in love, and that’s basically what this album is about is just kind of falling in love and what that feels like.”

When asked by DeGeneres if Cabello and Mendes had feelings for each other back in 2015, 2016, she replied, “We were stupid. I think we both had a crush, but we were being babies about it. But we’re grown now!”

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As for the album, references to her romance with Mendes are everywhere. In singles “Liar” and “Shameless,” she said,”They’re both about the same situation… I was denying feelings for this person for a long time. And before I would see him, I’d be like, ‘I don’t like him, I don’t like him. What, I don’t like him.’ And then I would be like ‘I like him.'” This would nod to Cabello and Mendes being friends before becoming romantic.

In “Used to This,” she sings, “No, I never liked San Francisco / Never thought it was nothin’ special / ‘Til you kissed me there / No, I never liked windy cities / But I think maybe when you’re with me / I like everywhere (Oh).” That would refer to the month prior, when she told a crowd at Apple Music’s New Music Daily performance that she and Mendes shared their first date and kiss in San Francisco.

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As for Mendes? He shared on his Instagram Stories that he was streaming the new album.

March 2020

During the coronavirus outbreak, Mendes and Cabello are quarantining together. On Friday, March 20, they put on a livestream concert from their remote Miami location; the show featured four songs and was sponsored by Global Citizen and the World Health Organization.

They had several cute moments during the 20-plus-minute show, but the best might have been when Cabello defended Mendes’s long hair from critics.

“I like it a lot,” she said. When a Shawn Mendes fan account wrote that Mendes’s hair looks great, Cabello said, “I am ‘Shawn Mendes Updates’—secretly.”

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They also talked favorite Harry Potter characters and revealed they are re-watching the whole film series during quarantine.

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A few days after their livestream, the couple began their now-infamous joint quarantine walks. The pair was photographed strolling through a Miami neighborhood holding coffee mugs as they dramatically kissed. Mendes was shirtless, wearing black slides and several necklaces. Meanwhile, Cabello wore a patterned maxi dress and flip-flops.

Cabello and Mendes celebrated the one-week anniversary of their quarantine kiss by recreating it for the waiting paparazzi. The couple wore basically the same outfits for their outing (Mendes had a shirt on this time) as they drank coffee. Cabello sipped her brew from a Minions coffee mug while they walked, albeit at a notably slow pace.

April 2020

The couple decided to surprise patients at Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C. on April 7. Cabello and Mendes teamed up with the Ryan Seacrest Foundation to video chat with patients, dance to music, and give updates on their joint quarantine.

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Cabello also shared video from the day, captioning an Instagram post, “Kids are the light of this whole world!!!!! We hung out with some friends at the hospital in DC yesterday – thanks @ryanfoundation for bringing smiles to these kids, who are brave and spunky and warriors everyday!”

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During their time at home, the pair has also lent their musical talents to a few virtual concert specials. Cabello and Mendes performed an acoustic version of her song, “My Oh My” for the “iHeartRadio Living Room Concert For America” on Fox. Mendes accompanied Cabello on the guitar as she sang:

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Next, the couple lent their voices to Global Citizen’s “One World: Together At Home” broadcast on Saturday, April 18, alongside the likes of Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Lizzo.

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May 2020

Cabello shared an update from quarantine with Mendes on Instagram, posing with his dogs.

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Later that month, the couple joined protesters marching at Miami’s Black Lives Matter rally in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Miami Herald reporter Bianca Padró Ocasio posted photos of them protesting on Twitter.

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September 2020

After months of silence from Mendes and Cabello regarding their relationship, she shared a sneak peek video from his new album. “the world could use some magic, beauty, and Wonder always, but especially right now. @shawnmendes what a gorgeous gift to the world. He’s crafted this album with every last bit of his soul, his spirit, and his essence with the purest of intentions. My love, I’m so proud of the person you are and I’m so excited for people to see and hear your heart. ❤️” Cabello wrote on Instagram.

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October 2020

As Mendes began the press tour for his upcoming album, Wonder, he also offered an update on his relationship. “I thought that I was a pretty open, emotional, guy until I started being in a relationship with someone that I really, truly love and, realizing that, ‘Oh no, I really have this big ego, and I don’t want to show her that I’m hurting and I don’t want to show her that that offended me, and like I want to be the man, and I want to be strong in this relationship,'” he told radio.com. “It actually was hurting our relationship.”

He also spoke about how supportive Cabello has been of his upcoming release. “She really was a champion for this album,” Mendes explained. “I remember back when I first started a lot of the concepts and they felt a little bit intimidating. She was like, ‘Go, keep going, keep going.’ And she would do this thing like once a month, ‘Hey, just a reminder, this concept you’re on is incredible. It’s going to make people feel something really special. Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.'”

This month, Mendes shared his first photo with Cabello in months. “reina 🦋” he captioned the candid, which translates to “queen” in English. Cabello commented, “Mi Rey,” which is “my king” in Spanish.

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Next, Mendes spoke to SiriusXM Hits 1’s Nicole Ryan and SiriusXM’s Jim Ryan in two different interviews about Cabello’s inspiration in his career. “I haven’t seen her actually in like a month and two weeks, not that I’m counting,” he told Nicole Ryan, referencing Cabello’s Cinderella filming schedule. “She’s back really soon and I think it’s interesting ’cause when your girlfriend is an insanely talented, real musician who writes her own music, it’s scary to write an album around her. And she was with me when I was kind of in the studio doing it. I realized the trick is like, show her the really rough demo version from your phone that you recorded, and if she doesn’t like that, she’ll tell you, then don’t wait to show her the mixed finished product. Because if she doesn’t like it then, then you’re kind of, I don’t know what to say to you. I’m sorry.”

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When speaking with Jim Ryan, Mendes said that quarantine has made his relationship with Cabello stronger. “It’s funny ’cause there was like a real time when she was doing her thing and then I was doing my thing and we were together, but like, also working separately and the quarantine brought us together and now we’ve kind of become one, where we’re doing our thing,” he said. “And it’s really interesting how that dynamic changes when, especially when your girlfriend’s a writer and a musician and she’s incredible, you have two options. You can be really scared and intimidated or you can be like, ‘Oh, I should probably ask you for some help or like what you think.'”

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Mendes went on to say of Cabello, “I don’t know if she’s credited all over the album, but she should be, because there was nobody during the time that was giving me more advice and encouragement to just stick to the way I felt about the music that I wanted to make, you know?”

By the end of the month, Cabello and Mendes were back to their usual couple posts on Instagram. “heheheheheh” Cabello captioned a photo of herself wrapped around her boyfriend.

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For Halloween, Mendes shared a photo of the pair in their costumes. “Me, but beat up, and a Miami witch. THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT IS NEVER CANCELED !!!!!!!! (caption by camila)” he wrote alongside the snap.

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November 2020

At the beginning of the month, Mendes and Cabello took a major step in their relationship—getting a dog together. “Hi Tarzan 🥺❤️” Mendes captioned a post that included Cabello playing with the new pup. She also announced the dog’s arrival with her own post featuring Mendes.

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For the cover of VMAN, Elton John interviewed Mendes and he again opened up his Cabello romance. He confirmed how long they’d been dating (“Almost a year and a half. We’ve known each other for like, six or seven”) and the “very” calming effect she has on him. “I started reaching back out to my family and friends and all of these connections I felt were further away…I felt a little bit alone out there and she changed that for me,” Mendes told John.

He also continued to praise her musical sensibilities. “There is a song on the record called ‘Song for No One,'” Mendes said when asked about his favorite track on Wonder. “I wrote it three years ago, and it was before any conceptualization of this album. It was after three days of striking out, and we gave up the room. I started playing this really eerie guitar part, super small. The whole thing is really sad; [I was] not with Camila at the time. I was a little hungover and wishing I was with her. The producer I was with was like, ‘OK, keep this, I have this grand idea for it.’ Next thing I hear, it goes from this beautiful minor progression string swell to this massive ’60s fill, and opens up into a major progression with horns and string and harp parts, and it’s like the drops open…I don’t know what it is about that one, but that one, in particular, gets me.”

Amid his interviews about Cabello, Mendes captioned a selfie with her using a single heart emoji.

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Then he talked about Cabello again in an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe:

A lot happens when you fall in love for the first time, because you really feel this support, this grounded, ‘Hey, if everything goes away, I’m going to be okay.’ It’s perspective, and it’s beautiful. And it really allows you to be like, ‘OK, well, if I’m going to do this [make music, etc.], I might as well be doing it for the right reasons and really, really, really enjoying it.’ Otherwise, I’d just rather watch movies with you all day.

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Mendes also continued to get candid about how his own insecurities played a role in his romance with Cabello. “I have always considered myself a really vulnerable guy, I was the guy who wrote In My Blood. I’m the guy who talks about anxiety. I’m cool, I’m sensitive, I’m vulnerable, I always thought of myself that way until I had a girlfriend who I was so serious about, then I realized how much I was scared of being the weak man,” he said. “I mean, I went through a month where I couldn’t really even communicate with her because I was struggling with anxiety and I didn’t want her to see me weak. And I was on the verge of ruining our relationship. And then when you come out on the other end and you’re like, ‘Listen, I’m struggling here, it’s hard for me to even say this to you.’ And everything starts building and growing and getting stronger and the roots fortify, and you look around and you’re like, ‘Oh shit.’ Bravery. That’s bravery. That’s strength.”

With the Nov. 23 release of his Netflix documentary, Shawn Mendes: In Wonder, the Grammy nominee offered new insight into the couple’s love. Most notably, Mendes claimed that every song he’s written is about Cabello. “We were in New York and my song comes on the radio or something, and the fact comes up that it’s about her, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s about you.’ And I’m like, ‘Everything is about you. They’ve always been about you,’” he admits during In Wonder. “She goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I’m like, ‘They’re all about you. Like, every song I’ve ever wrote.’ And I’m, like, rhyming off the songs. I’m like, ‘Treat You Better,’ like, all these songs. And she’s like, ‘Oh, my God.’ She literally had no idea. This whole time I thought she, like, knew.”

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Mendes went on to say that no matter how many love songs he writes for Cabello, they will never describe their connection accurately. “I don’t think I’ll be able to write songs that really do it justice, that can really capture the things and the feelings with her,” Mendes explained. “I think it’s like when you see a moon or stars and you try to take a photo of it with your iPhone, and then you just can’t, it just doesn’t look good. And you’re like, ‘It’s not supposed to be captured.’ You know? It’s just supposed to be for us.”

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Tonight, the American Music Awards came and went with appearances from stars like Billie Eilish, The Weeknd, and BTS. But despite winning some of the evening’s top honors, Taylor Swift did not attend the award show in person. She explained why in her acceptance speech for Artist of the Year, which she recorded from the studio where she is re-recording her first six albums.

“Oh hey guys, thank you so much for this!” she started. “This is a fan-voted award, which means so much to me. You guys have been beyond wonderful all the years of my career but especially this one when we’ve been so far apart. We haven’t been able to see each other in concert, but I still feel really connected to you through the music and your reaction to folklore and all the ways in which your imagination honored that album. I just love you so much and I’m really, really lucky because of you. The reason I’m not there tonight is I’m actually re-recording all of my old music in the studio where we originally recorded it. So it’s been amazing, and I can’t wait for you to hear it but have a great night! I love you so much and thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, guys.”

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Swift won Artist of the Year, Favorite Music Video (for “cardigan”), and Favorite Female Artist — Pop/Rock. She was also up for Favorite Album — Pop/Rock (for folklore).

Swift has been quarantining with her British boyfriend of four years Joe Alwyn. Earlier Sunday, Swift shared a photo of herself in a cabin, writing, “not a lot going on at the moment.” That’s of course a reference to her Red music video “22” and a nod to Swift’s work re-recording her first six albums.

Earlier this month, Scooter Braun sold Swift’s first six albums’ masters that he acquired with his purchase of Big Machine Label, Swift’s former record label where she started out of her career, to a private equity firm. Swift revealed on Twitter that she had tried to buy them back, but he made the terms impossible for her team to enter negotiation with his.

As she wrote in her Twitter statement, “Scooter’s team wanted me to sign an ironclad NDA stating I would never say another word about Scooter Braun unless it was positive, before we could even look at the financial records of BMLG (which is always the first step in a purchase of this nature). So, I would have to sign a document that would silence me forever before I could even have a chance to bid on my own work. My legal team said that this is absolutely NOT normal, and they’ve never seen an NDA like this presented unless it was to silence an assault accuser by paying them off 😬 He would never even quote my team a price. These master recordings were not for sale to me.”

Swift added that she is continuing her original plan of re-recording her first six albums now that she is legally able to recreate the songs.

“I have recently begun re-recording my older music, and it has already proven to be both exciting and creatively fulfilling,” she wrote. “I have plenty of surprises in store 😎 I want to thank you guys for supporting me through this ongoing saga, and I can’t wait for you to hear what I’ve been dreaming up.”

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The boys of BTS—Jungkook, V, Jin, Jimin, J-Hope, RM, and Suga—performed at the American Music Awards from South Korea tonight, and they brought a big dose of merriment into the upcoming holiday week. BTS did their first live performance of “Life Goes On” for the U.S. awards show, then also performed “Dynamite.” They wore different outfits for each number, opting for black and white outfits for “Life Goes On” and then bright pastel ensembles for “Dynamite.” As always with BTS, the choreography was top-notch and intricate for “Dynamite,” while “Life Goes On” was a more intimate, singing-focused number. Both were masterfully done and closed out the award show with a bang:

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BTS was nominated for two awards at the AMAs tonight: Favorite Social Artist and Favorite Duo or Group – Pop/Rock—they won both categories. They gave an acceptance speech for Favorite Duo or Group during the show, with the group in suits then. The boys gave a heartfelt thanks to their fans, the ARMY:

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The group spoke to Entertainment Tonight ahead of the show’s broadcast about their new album Be, which came out Friday and captures this time the world has been spending in quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Everyone’s pretty vocal about their opinions,” Jimin said. “We talked about many themes and emotions and put all of them into this album.”

“We hope that fans can find comfort in this track,” Jin said of their song “Life Goes On,” which they performed first on the broadcast.

The boys spoke about “Dynamite” earlier this year, which they performed for the first time live at the MTV VMAs in August.

BTS told Zane Lowe on Apple Music when the song came out two weeks before that “Dynamite” is “made of positive vibes, energy, hope, love, the purity, everything. Recording this song was really fun, and like Jin said, we’re going through difficult times so we tried to have more fun working on this song. We made this song in hopes of giving energy to the listeners. We’re glad this song turned out great and hope a lot of our fans can listen to it to receive the positive energy we tried to incorporate in the song.”

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Episode 5 of The Crown season 4, “Fagan” focuses on the July 1982 morning when 32-year-old Michael Fagan broke into Buckingham Palace—specifically, the queen’s bedroom—while she was in her bed.

In The Crown, Fagan is a father having difficulty finding work. He can’t get the help he needs to make his apartment a safe place for his kids, and when he loses custody, he feels let down by the leaders of his country. He’s particularly disappointed in Margaret Thatcher, whose handling of the Falklands War and economic policies known as “Thatcherism” made life difficult for the country’s poorest—including people like Fagan. As The Guardian pointed out after Thatcher’s death in April 2013, the prime minister’s approach to home ownership in the country—including the Housing Act of 1980, which gave Britons the right to buy council homes but only benefited households capable of purchasing said homes—contributed to a U.K. housing crisis that reverberates to this day.

“Fagan” gets into some of the frustrations that people like Fagan were feeling toward their Prime Minister. But what does the episode get right about Fagan—and how much of it used his story as a tool to make a point about Thatcherism?

What exactly happened when Fagan broke into the palace?

As The Crown portrays, Fagan (played by Tom Brooke) was a painter-decorator born in Clerkenwell, London—and yes, he really did break into Buckingham Palace twice.

On June 7, 1982, he broke in through a chambermaid’s window, per a 2012 interview with The Independent. Though she alerted the staff, he was not caught, and wandered about until he happened upon a room full of gifts for the expected royal baby Prince William. He drank from a bottle of wine, as The Crown depicts, then left.

Three days later, Fagan drove a stolen car to Stonehenge, where he was reportedly looking for his wife. He was arrested and spent three weeks in jail in Brixton. He got out on bail and returned to the palace the next day.

On July 9, 1982, at about 6:30 a.m., he arrived at the Queen’s bedside, with what The Washington Post reported as “a piece of jagged glass from an ashtray in his hand, blood dripping from a cut.” At the time, his lawyer said he “spent just over 10 minutes” talking to the queen. Since then, Fagan himself has provided accounts that contradict the amount of time he spent in the queen’s bedroom.

He told The Independent that when he pulled back the curtains, the Queen said, ‘Wawrt are you doing here?!’” and “went past me and ran out of the room; her little bare feet running across the floor.” The way Fagan tells it, Elizabeth called for a footman who stayed with Fagan—and even offered the intruder some whiskey—until the police arrived.

In 1982, Fagan told the court, via an archival article from The Guardian, about his first break-in on June 7: “I walked straight in. I was surprised I wasn’t captured straight away. I could have been a rapist or something. I knew I could break the security system because it was so weak.”

He said he walked past bedrooms with names of the royals on the door, including one that said “Mark Phillips,” Princess Anne’s husband, whom she divorced in 1992. He reportedly told police that he didn’t want to disturb the couple. “I was waiting to be captured,” he told the court. “I drank [the wine] because I was waiting for someone to come.” He added: “I couldn’t find anyone,” he told police later, “so I thought, ‘Sod it’ and I went out and went home.”

Let’s get one thing straight: This whole thing stemmed from a lot of mushrooms.

The way The Crown tells it, Fagan was motivated by his desire to talk to the queen about Margaret Thatcher’s harmful policies. But, in fact, his little trip to the palace had a lot more to do with a bunch of mushrooms than it did his interest in righting Britain’s wrongs.

In 2012, he told The Independent: “I don’t know why I did it, something just got into my head,” he said, and then he started singing the Pink Floyd song “Brain Damage”: “There’s someone in my head and it’s not me…”

He added: “I went back because I thought ‘that’s naughty, that’s naughty that I can walk round there.’” And then came the real culprit: “I forgot you’re only supposed to take a little handful [of mushrooms],” he said. He had added a bunch to soup he’d eaten five months earlier. “Two years later I was still coming down. I was high on mushrooms for a long, long time.”

Fagan also revealed he suffered a mental breakdown after his wife left him in the weeks leading up to his second break-in.

The queen and Fagan did not get into a 10-minute discussion about the state of the country

The Crown didn’t totally make up this long interaction between Fagan and the monarch; there were reports at the time that the two chatted for a while. But Fagan told The Independent in 2012 that their meeting was a pretty brief one. The queen was also not asleep when Fagan entered her bedroom; he told The Sun, “She was wide awake when I got in there.”

He also told The Guardian that he did not ask the queen for a cigarette, like his character in The Crown: “That would have been cheeky and disrespectful.” Fagan did, however, admit to sitting on the corner of her bed and even peeing in corgi food on his way to the queen’s bedroom.

There are some things The Crown doesn’t show you.

First of all, per The Washington Post’s 1982 reporting, Fagan visited the palace a few times in the months before he met with the queen, telling his family that he was going to visit his “girlfriend, Elizabeth Regina.”

In 1984, Fagan attacked a policeman at a cafe and received a three-month jail sentence. Fagan was also found guilty of indecent exposure in 1987, and in 1997, he was sentenced to four years in prison for dealing heroin.

This doesn’t have to do with any run-ins with the law, but in 1983, he recorded a version of “God Save the Queen” with the Bollock Brothers. Here you go:

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Per an interview Fagan did with The Telegraph this month, he is now 70 years old, recovering from a heart attack and COVID-19, and lives in Islington in North London with his partner of 17 years, Rhian. He has three great-grandchildren. He also seems pretty pleased that he’s become infamous in Britain—and now, to the world: “I’ve met children downstairs who say, ‘We were learning about you in our lessons.’ Kids get taught about me at school, I swear,” he told the newspaper.

He doesn’t seem to be a fan of The Crown.

“I was taken aback when I saw [Tom] Brooke playing me,” he told The Sun. “They could have surely found someone who looks a bit like me. I’m actually better looking and he seems totally charmless.” In the publication’s August interview with Fagan, he predicted the show would not get the details of his palace break-in right: “I’m sad they never thought to speak to me before they made this rubbish because the truth is a much better story.”

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The Crown season 4 episode 6 ends on what may be the most emotionally excruciating moment of the season (and there is no shortage of contenders). After returning from the emotional rollercoaster that was her Australian tour with Charles, Diana is at her wits’ end and requests an audience with the queen. She opens up about her marital problems with Charles and explains how he resents her for eclipsing him in the press. Far from offering any comfort, the queen is coldly unreceptive, asking Diana: “Is it possible that there’s a part of you that’s enjoying your own success a little too much?” She goes on to accuse Diana of playing up to the press for attention, and Diana admits it does feel good to get validation from the public, in lieu of getting any from her in-laws.

“If you show me love, approval and acceptance, everyone else will follow,” Diana says. She then hugs the queen, who seems more unsettled by this display of affection than she was when an intruder broke into her bedroom in the previous episode. It’s…brutal.

So how accurate is the depiction of the queen and Diana’s relationship in The Crown? Read on for the more complicated truth.

Diana’s relationship with the queen was initially friendly.

Although she’s sometimes described as a “commoner” and an outsider, Lady Diana Spencer was in fact no stranger to the royal family. The Spencers were an upper-class family with longstanding ties to the royals—Diana’s grandmothers were both ladies-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother—so Diana and her sisters grew up in the same circles as Charles and his siblings. Diana had already met the queen before she began dating her son, and royal biographer Ingrid Seward wrote in 2001 that as the couple’s relationship blossomed, the queen “never directly addressed the question of his marriage, but by nod and nuance, she made it clear she ap­proved of Diana.” The monarch also seemed to grossly overestimate Diana’s ability to adjust to royal life. In a letter written shortly after the couple’s engagement announcement, the queen notes, “I trust that Diana will find living here less of a burden than is expected.” Instead, the soon-to-be princess struggled with bulimia and loneliness in the months leading up to her wedding.

According to Andrew Morton’s 1992 biography, Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words, Diana’s relationship with the queen was friendly—at least in comparison to her relationship with the Queen Mother, who kept her at arm’s length. “However,” Morton writes, “it was governed by the fact that she was married to her older son and a future Monarch. In the early days, Diana was quite simply terrified of her mother-in-law. She kept the formal obsequies—dropping a deep curtsy each time they met—but otherwise kept her distance.”

The queen entrusted Diana with representing her at royal events very early.

In 1982, shortly after Charles and Diana were married, Grace Kelly—aka Grace, Princess of Monaco—died. Diana had encountered Grace at a gala the previous year and the two had bonded, so she went to Charles and asked if it would be possible for her to represent the queen at Grace’s funeral.

According to Morton, both Charles and palace staff told her it was unlikely she would be allowed to go. “I went to her private secretary, who was then Philip Moore, who said that he didn’t think it would be possible because I’d only been in the job three or four months,” Diana recalled to Morton. “I went to the queen and I said, ‘You know, I’d like to do this,’ and she said ‘I don’t see why not. If you want to do this, you can.'”

Though Diana was still new to her royal role and just 21 years old at the time, the queen was right to trust her. It was her first solo overseas trip as a representative of the royal family, and she won praise for her “dignified manner at the highly charged and at times mawkish funeral service,” per Morton.

How did the Queen react to Charles and Diana’s split?

As the pressures of her high profile and troubled marriage began to get to Diana, she felt “extremely isolated” by the royal family, who “continuously misunderstood” her, according to a letter she wrote to her friend Dudley Poplak in 1991.

Although there’s no reports of a scene quite as brutal as the one The Crown depicts, Seward writes that Diana would appear unannounced at the palace as her marriage crumbled:

At first, the Queen took a tolerant view of these unscheduled visits. “Diana was usually in a lot better mood when she left than she was when she arrived,” one of the Queen’s staff recalled.

In time, though, Elizabeth came to dread the meetings. After one session a footman said, “The Princess cried three times in a half an hour while she was waiting to see you.” The Queen replied, “I had her for an hour—and she cried nonstop.”

In a transcript of her interview with Morton, Diana recalled a conversation in which the Queen “indicated to [her] that the reason why our marriage had gone downhill was because Prince Charles was having such a difficult time with my bulimia.” In that moment, Diana explained, she realized the royal family saw her bulimia as the cause of her problems with Charles, rather than a symptom of them.

But the queen wasn’t wholly unsupportive. Just like Prince Philip, she did offer support to Diana in the wake of the split. “She [found] one perhaps rather unlikely ally at the palace in the queen,” Morton wrote, “whose understanding and helpful attitude did much to encourage Diana to soldier on.”

Did the queen learn anything from Diana?

According to Morton, the queen took at least one significant lesson from her relationship with Diana, Accurately or not, the public perception was that she didn’t make much of an effort to welcome her new daughter-in-law to the family. “One of the many ironies of [the queen’s] life is that Diana’s impact on the royal family is measured by how much more accommodating the house of Windsor is now to newcomers,” Morton wrote in the 2017 anniversary edition of his biography. “It is noticeable that the queen frequently joined Prince William’s bride Catherine Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, in the early days of her Royal career. Certainly lessons have been learned—but at a price.”

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The seventh episode of The Crown season 4 is titled “The Hereditary Principle,” which on first glance seems to be a reference to Princess Margaret’s (Helena Bonham Carter) discovery of her long-hidden cousins, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon. The cousins were born with severe developmental problems and spent their adult lives in a psychiatric ward. Margaret, who has been struggling with her own mental health, fears that she may be doomed to the same fate thanks to genetics.

But in fact, the Hereditary Principle refers to the system that governs the British monarchy and its line of succession. In a hereditary monarchy, the transfer of power is governed by bloodlines. Per BBC History magazine, “power and titles pass from family member to family member.” And in the episode, Princess Margaret’s place within the hereditary hierarchy is diminished when Queen Elizabeth’s youngest son, Edward, comes of age. Below, a primer on exactly what happened here.

Where is Princess Margaret in the line of succession?

The royal line of succession runs in birth order, meaning that at the time of King George VI’s death in 1952, Elizabeth was first in line to the throne and Margaret was second. Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s four children, Charles, Andrew, Edward, and Anne, were all born ahead of Margaret in the line of succession. Anne is behind her brothers—and their children—because of a sexist tradition that was finally changed in 2013. By 1985, when the episode takes place, Margaret was ninth in line, behind the queen’s four children and four grandchildren (Charles and Anne each had two children at this point).

How did Prince Edward’s birthday in 1985 impact Princess Margaret’s position in the monarchy?

This is where the 1937 Regency Act comes in. As the queen’s private secretary Martin Charteris explains in the episode, the act created a list of senior royals who could be called on to deputize for the monarch in an official capacity; these royals are called Counsellors of State. Now that Edward has turned 21, he is considered to be of age (later versions of the Act amended this to 18), which doesn’t change his place in the line of succession, but does mean he’ll automatically be added to the Regency Act list—in place of Margaret. The Regency Act restricts the number of Counsellors of State to just six, per BBC History, and Margaret no longer makes the cut; the six who did were Prince Philip, the Queen Mother, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward, and Princess Anne.

The Act reads: “An Act to provide that, in the event of a Regency becoming necessary under the Regency Act 1937, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh shall in certain circumstances be the Regent, to provide that the heir apparent or heir presumptive to the Throne shall be deemed for the purposes of that Act to be of full age if he or she has attained the age of eighteen years, to add Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to the persons to whom royal functions may be delegated as Counsellors of State, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.”

Margaret, therefore, is asked to relinquish her role as counsellor of state. The episode really sticks the knife in here, because just days earlier, Margaret has all but begged the wueen to give her more responsibility, not less. “I’m finally ready to focus on the one thing that won’t let me down,” she says, in an uncharacteristic moment of vulnerability after a romantic rejection. “Us. My position as a royal. My duty. I come on bended knee with a familiar request: Give me as much responsibility as you can. What your sister needs to stay afloat is a sense of meaning.”

The queen gives her a pained smile before breaking the news days later. In real life, there isn’t much reporting around how Margaret reacted to the demotion.

Margaret’s ill health also played a role in her stepping back from royal duties.

As depicted in the episode, Margaret underwent a serious lung operation at London’s National Heart and Chest Hospital in January of 1985. During the surgery, she had part of one of her lungs removed, which was found not to be cancerous.

“Princess Margaret underwent an operation yesterday,” the hospital said in a statement, per AP. “This was to remove a small area of her left lung, which was found to be innocent.” But the cancer scare was particularly worrying given Margaret’s family history. Her father, King George VI, died of lung cancer, and she had been a heavy smoker throughout her life.

According to BBC History, Margaret’s failing health led to her being seen more positively by the press and the public. “News editors were aware of her personal situation, so treated her more sympathetically,” the magazine quotes royal historian Dr. Ed Owens as saying. “As the public’s attention shifted to the activities (and antics) of Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, Margaret was gradually regarded with greater affection. She disapproved of the behavior of the younger royal women, and she re-asserted herself in public life as a figure who was devoted to her duty and the queen, playing the role of reliable sister and confidante.”

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