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His dad dated Barbra Streisand and his mother partied with the Rolling Stones, so perhaps it is no shock to see the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau romantically linked with the American singer Katy Perry.
But it is a surprise. “This was NOT on my 2025 bingo card,” posted the entertainment news site Tyla in July, when the couple were first spotted together in Montreal. Grazia magazine this week labelled them “2025’s most surprising couple”.
At the weekend Trudeau, 53, and Perry were seen leaving Le Crazy Horse Cabaret Club in Paris on Perry’s 41st birthday. They were holding hands. Neither has publicly commented, but the image is seen as the couple confirming that they are indeed an item.
They join a strikingly short list of known-about relationships between politicians and singers, which includes Justin’s father, Pierre, and Streisand; and the former Liberal Democrat Lembit Öpik with the Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia.
Politician-actor relationships and marriages are more common: Rita Hayworth and then UN ambassador Aly Khan; John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe; Elizabeth Taylor and the US senator John Warner; and Pierre Trudeau – again, but this time very briefly – with Kim Cattrall.
Every time, the public interest has been wide and intense, which annoys some people, who believe it no more than celebrity gossip and best ignored.
But it is OK to be interested and to care, says the comedy writer Gráinne Maguire, who co-hosts a podcast series on the subject of celebrity relationships.
“No matter how famous you are, there are certain beats to life and a relationship that are exactly the same,” she said. “If you’re famous, they’re probably more sped-up or they’re more exaggerated.”
People cannot go around asking neighbours or strangers about the inner workings of relationships – but they can read about celebrities and politicians.
“We all might get together with somebody and we might move things along too quickly, or we fall in love with the idea of the person, not the real person, or they’re right for that moment in your life but then you change so then it doesn’t work any more.
“When you look at celebrity couples, when you can really drill into the dynamics of what happened, you can see it is just life.”
Celebrity relationships could shine a light on all sorts of issues, said Maguire, whether insecurities, careers before children – or just when it’s time to end it.
“The most human part of a famous person is their private life,” said Maguire, whose podcast The Way They Were explores celebrity breakups, whether Truman Capote and Jack Dunphy or Lily Allen and David Harbour.
Neither Perry nor Trudeau, Maguire and others note, is at the top of their careers or lives.
Perry’s latest album, four years after the previous one, was widely panned – although not perhaps as bad as made out by some. Yes, it’s “common-or-garden mediocre pop”, wrote the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis, “but it’s certainly some way short of total catastrophe.”
The singer was also mocked for going on the Jeff Bezos-funded all-female space mission.
In July, Perry and the British actor Orlando Bloom confirmed they were splitting, six years after getting engaged. “She is struggling for relevancy,” said Maguire. As is, arguably, Trudeau.
Elected as Canada’s prime minister in 2015, Trudeau announced in January that he was stepping down, effectively forced out by his own party.
In 2023, Trudeau and his wife, Sophie, revealed they were separating after 18 years of marriage, following what they said were “meaningful and difficult conversations”.
Back in charge of his own social media, one of Trudeau’s first Instagram posts was a photo of him shopping for kitchen supplies at a homewares outlet – “Gotta love a Monday morning at Canadian Tire,” he wrote, prompting comment about the divorced dad vibes he was giving off.
The Trudeau-Perry story has, inevitably, led to people looking back to Trudeau Sr and his relationship with Streisand, and what a love story it could have become.
Pierre Trudeau was one of Canada’s most successful, flamboyant and unconventional politicians. He rode a Harley-Davidson, liked skinny dipping and sliding down banisters, and wore open-toe sandals in the legislature.
Barbra Streisand was Barbra Streisand.
“Wow,” she wrote in her autobiography about their first meeting. “I was intrigued by that dichotomy … the serious politician and the bohemian. Those two don’t usually go together.”
Streisand, whose marriage with the actor Elliott Gould was on the rocks, was dazzled by this “very dapper, intelligent, intense” man, a “kind of combination of Albert Einstein and Napoleon (only taller)”.
They became an item in 1969. “I remember one afternoon … I was lying with my head on his lap, while he was reading official papers and I was reading a script. I thought to myself, This is bliss.”
The one thing she was not looking for, however, was a new husband and having more children, both of which she suspected Trudeau wanted.
What next for Trudeau Jr and Perry remains to be seen. They are relatively young but past their peak, argues Maguire, both perhaps asking themselves what’s next. Might Trudeau and Perry be the next George and Amal? The next Harry and Meghan?
“There is a podcast coming, is what I’m saying,” said Maguire. “A podcast and a foundation. I’m calling it.”
