He’ll always be her Starboy. Bella Hadid opened up about her ex-boyfriend The Weeknd in a new interview with Teen Vogue, admitting that she will “always love him” despite their split last fall.
“It was my first breakup … and so public,” the 20-year-old model said. “As an outsider, you might think I handled it so well, but it’s always in your heart, and you always feel it very heavily. It’ll be hard for a while. Love hurts, but you have to pull through. But I’ll always respect him, and I’ll always love him. Sometimes you want to be sad about it or handle it differently, but at the end of the day, you never want to burn a bridge that you’ve fought so hard to build.”
Hadid and The Weeknd (né Abel Tesfaye), 26, decided to call it quits on their relationship last November after nearly two years together. A source told Us Weekly at the time that their conflicting schedules were to blame.
“They still have a great deal of love and respect for each other and will remain friends, but it has been too hard to coordinate their schedules with him finishing and promoting his [Starboy] album,” the source told Us. “They really tried to make it work.”
The pair have remained seemingly amicable since their split, first publicly crossing paths at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show just weeks after their breakup. (The Weeknd performed on the catwalk, where a stoic Hadid strutted her stuff in sultry gray lingerie.)
But in January, the “Secrets” singer was photographed smooching Selena Gomez while leaving Santa Monica restaurant Giorgio Baldi together, and Hadid seemed to respond with an unapologetic post to Instagram, of herself stalking away, with a middle finger waving at the camera.
One week later, however, Hadid and The Weeknd were spotted in the same social setting yet again at a memorial concert in honor of A$AP Yams at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Celebrity jeweler Ben Baller posted photos of both celebrities on his Instagram page, but it’s unclear whether the exes actually crossed paths. (The Weeknd and Gomez recently traveled to Florence, Italy, together, where they held hands and made out during a romantic dinner.)
According to an insider, Hadid is “pissed” that The Weeknd has moved on with Gomez, 24, and has reached out to her former flame to warn him about the “Hands to Myself” singer. “Bella has reached out to Abel a few times and told him Selena is using him,” a Hadid pal told Us. “He thinks she’s just jealous and isn’t listening to her.”
