He wasn’t interested in sharing his game plan. When Jamie Foxx sat down with ESPN for a February 16 SportsCenter interview, he expected to chat about his role in that evening’s NBA All-Star Celebrity Game.
Instead, the host asked about his No. 1 teammate. Noting photos of Foxx and girlfriend Katie Holmes heading to a court near Calabasas, California, he asked, “Did you and Katie Holmes play basketball for Valentine’s Day? Like some real Love & Basketball?”
But Foxx, 50, played defense on his personal life. Annoyed, he got up, removed his headset and walked away. The notoriously private star tried a different tack the following day when questioned by a photographer as he was leaving a charity basketball game fete. “It’s Black History Month,” he joked. “No white girls until March 1.”
Holmes’ pals failed to find the funny. “Katie’s friends don’t get why she’s still with him,” a source close to the Ocean’s 8 actress, 39, explains in the new issue of Us Weekly. “They found his comments quite interesting.”
But to Holmes, they were pure Foxx. “She knows he was joking,” says another Holmes insider. “She loves his sense of humor and doesn’t take a comment like that personally or seriously.”
Particularly when she understands his motives. More than four years in, the couple see no need to declare their devotion. Though they’ve recently dropped their cloak-and-dagger dating methods (gone are the days when they’d rent out entire restaurants to avoid fellow diners’ stares), they’re not totally relaxing their stance on privacy.
“Katie and Jamie have an agreement that they’ll never talk about their relationship or each other in the press,” explains the Holmes insider, adding that the Dawson’s Creek alum “appreciated” how the father of two handled the ESPN inquiry: “She felt he was respecting their agreement.”
As for his other quip, she knows the Robin Hood star is still on her calendar. Though a friend notes date nights are “contingent on their work schedules,” Foxx and the mom of 11-year-old Suri “are together almost every day. They spend as much time together as they can. They really are in love.”
For more on the pair’s relationship, pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on stands now!
