She scheduled middle-of-the-night transatlantic flights on her private jet, took to carrying an oversized golf umbrella rain or shine and concocted elaborate plans to out-smart the ever-present photographers who surrounded her seven-bedroom penthouse in NYC’s Tribeca neighborhood.
And on one July afternoon, Taylor Swift was so eager to prevent pictures of her and boyfriend Joe Alwyn that she instructed her security team to set up in front of the building, says a source, “then had a car pull to the back so they could run in wearing matching hoodies.” As another insider explains in the new issue of Us Weekly, “She’s been going the distance to keep things private.”
Now she’s strategizing her return to omnipresence. It started months ahead of her sixth album’s hotly anticipated November 10 release, as the 27-year-old, who took a months-long social media hiatus this spring, teased her 104 million Instagram followers with song lyrics and video clips.
And come November 11, the 10-time Grammy winner will officially “come out of hiding,” says a source, performing two tracks off Reputation on Saturday Night Live. After her self-induced seclusion — save for a pre-Super Bowl performance in February and court testimony in the August trial of a DJ who groped her, she’s avoided the public eye for nearly all of 2017 — “she’s happy to be back in public,” says a Swift insider.
And ready to show off just how happy she is. Though she’s kept her nearly yearlong romance with Alwyn, 26, firmly under wraps, the insider says she’s considering having him join her at the November 12 Europe Music Awards in London. “He might attend,” says the insider, noting Swift is giving their debut a lot of thought. “She wants to reveal their relationship when the time is right.”
She’s already fairly confident Alwyn is Mr. Right. The family-oriented Brit (he still loves in London with his psychotherapist mom Elizabeth and documentarian dad Richard) and Swift enjoy a “boring relationship,” says the Swift insider. At the singer’s NYC spread she and the actor — he filmed the 2018 biopic The Favourite with her pal Emma Stone — hang on her private roof deck, work out together, watch movies and enjoy an easy domesticity. Says the insider, “Taylor loves to cook and bake for him.”
One day, she envisions preparing meals for a whole brood. “She’s always said she wants a big family and she sees herself having kids with Joe down the line,” says the insider. “Taylor really believes he’s the one for her.”
For more on Swift’s romance — and her post-album release plans — pick up the new issue of Us Weekly, on stands now!
