Did Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriend — we mean Tom Hiddleston — just make a subtle reference to his past relationship with the singer? Some Swifties are raising major eyebrows following Hiddleston’s brief appearance at the Emmy Awards on Monday, January 15.
Hiddleston, 42, presented the award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie alongside Loki costar Ke Huy Quan during Monday’s awards ceremony. (The trophy went to Lee Sung Jin for Beef.)
“Good evening, everyone. It’s wonderful to be here. You all look lovely,” Hiddleston told the crowd. Quan added, “Hi everyone, Tom Hiddleston wants all of you to know he loves me very much, right Tom?”
The crowd laughed as Hiddleston responded, “I love you, man.”
Swifites (or at least the ones on Us’ staff) were quick to speculate that the entire exchange was poking fun at Hiddleston’s short-lived romance with Swift, 34, in 2016. During their three-month fling, Hiddleston was photographed wearing an “I [heart] T.S.” tank top during her 4th of July party in Rhode Island.
“The truth is, it was the Fourth of July and a public holiday and we were playing a game and I slipped and hurt my back,” Hiddleston said, explaining the shirt during an interview with GQ from March 2017. “And I wanted to protect the graze from the sun and said, ‘Does anyone have a T-shirt?’ And one of her friends said, ‘I’ve got this’ … And we all laughed about it. It was a joke.”
This wasn’t the only Swift reference made toward Hiddleston during Emmys night. Fans were quick to notice that E!’s red carpet coverage appeared to play Swift’s song “Style” while Hiddleston was arriving at the event.
“They just showed tom hiddleston on e! and taylor swift’s style started playing in the bg lmao,” one fan on X (formerly Twitter) noticed. Another added, “Did E! Really just play Style(TV) with Tom Hiddleston on screen?”
A third joked, “Emmy’s red carpet on E! playing style tv while showing Tom Hiddleston is a choice … I hope that intern who made that decision is giggling and kicking their feet rn.”
Hiddleston and Swift met at the Met Gala in May 2016 and shared a dance together, kicking off their romance. However, by September of that year, Swift called it off.
“[Taylor] was the one to put the brakes on the relationship,” a source told Us Weekly at the time. “Tom wanted the relationship to be more public than she was comfortable with.”
Hiddleston, for his part, briefly addressed their relationship during the same GQ interview.
“I have to be so psychologically strong about not letting other people’s interpretations about my life affect my life,” he said. “A relationship exists between two people. We will always know what it was.”
While Swift has since moved on to another whirlwind relationship with Travis Kelce (she also dated Joe Alwyn for six years before their April 2023 split), Hiddleston has moved on with Zawe Ashton, with whom he welcomed his first child in late 2022.
