Don’t mess with Orlando Bloom! The story of how the Carnival Row star retrieved his items stolen by the infamous Bling Ring is almost as wild as the robberies themselves.
On Thursday, February 16, the Pirates of the Caribbean actor, 46, revealed on The Late Late Show With James Corden the tale of how he wore a wire in order to take back his collection of watches stolen by the group in the early 2000s.
From 2008 to 2009, the group — made up of Alexis Neiers, Rachel Lee, Nick Prugo, Courtney Ames and Diana Tamayo — stole over $3 million in designer goodies and cash from a slew of celebs, including Bloom, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and more. Among Bloom’s stolen items was a collection of expensive watches, one for each new film he makes.
On Thursday, Bloom told host James Corden and fellow guest Niall Horan that we was contacted about the whereabouts of his jewelry three months after his 2009 robbery.
“I got a phone call from a guy who I’d actually bought some of the watches from, saying, ‘I think your watches are surfacing,’” Bloom, who was in a relationship with ex-wife Miranda Kerr at the time of the robbery, recalled. “And I was like, ‘What?’ So, I go and meet the guy, and he goes, ‘I think you could probably get them back if you wanna.’”
The Lord of the Rings star set out to do just that — and channeled his inner spy to do so.
“I finally get the number of this guy. I’m calling this guy for maybe three to six months,” Bloom shared. “Eventually, I find out where he’s from. It’s a pawn shop, down in The Valley, kind of thing. I just rocked up to his shop one day and I wired myself. I had a little microphone.”
But things became more complicated upon meeting the man at the shop. “I was like, ‘Listen, no police, just I’d like to get my watches back,’” Bloom stated. “And he goes, ‘Listen, I’ve got to go around. I’ve got to rough some people up.’ There’s this whole story. I’m like, ‘Wait, what?’ I said, ‘Well, let’s go. Let’s go. I’ll rough some people up. You ready?’ Essentially, he goes, ‘I can’t do it right now,’ so I leave.”
On his way to Thanksgiving lunch with Kerr, 39, and son Flynn, now 12, Bloom said the man called him back asking him to return. Despite some hesitation, heading back to the shop was the right call, as the England native revealed, “On the table in his office, a box. I open it and I just started to cry.”
Inside were five out of his 10 stolen watches. Not eager to lose them again, Bloom — who has been in a relationship with Katy Perry since 2016 — noted, “I just said, ‘Thanks very much mate,’” grabbed the box, and bolted.
The Prince star wrapped up his story by poking fun at director Sofia Coppola’s 2013 film The Bling Ring — which starred Emma Watson, Katie Chang and Taissa Farmiga as fictionalized versions of the perpetrators — joking, “The movie of my getting the watches back probably would’ve been better.”
