Phoebe Dynevor reflects on 'surreal' media attention during Pete Davidson relationship

Phoebe Dynevor's star power reached new heights with Bridgerton, but she was thrust into a completely different stratosphere of celebrity when she began dating Pete Davidson.

The English actor, 28, looked back at the intense media attention surrounding her six-month relationship with the Saturday Night Live alum in 2021, telling Elle in a profile published Tuesday that she did not anticipate the fervor. "It just goes back to being naïve," Dynevor said. "I didn't think anyone would care. I was just being a young woman and dating and somehow that provokes a conversation."

"There were lots of hard lessons I had to learn through basically just having a personal life," she added. "You realize, Oh, I can't live my life in the way that I used to. I have to keep my cards slightly closer to my chest. There was a time, for example, when I'd post anything on my Instagram, and now I'm very, very careful about what I put out into the world." It was during that "very surreal" six months that she dealt with paparazzi for the first time in a way that she was not used to.

Karwai Tang/WireImage Phoebe Dynevor and Pete Davidson

"This whole world that I was opened up to was really intimidating," Dynevor said. "Having men outside your house with cameras is super scary when you live on your own. There were men who would wait outside my house with cameras, and it was the same men a few times. I don't want to go on the record and say that I was being stalked, but when you have paparazzi who are waiting outside your house, it definitely feels like that."

Dynevor said it was polarizing to have the attention taken away from her work as an actor. "People are going to make up whatever story that they want to make from a few pictures, that's fine," she said. "I had to learn to let things go and let it wash over my head instead of the normal reaction, which is to be like, But that's not true, and that didn't happen. You have to let it go and focus on the work. I really am just here to act; I love my job so much, and it was weird for me that the attention was being taken away from my work."

Dynevor and Davidson began dating in February 2021 and split that August. For those not well-versed in the expansive DGCU (that's Davidson Girlfriend Cinematic Universe), this was post-Ariana Grande breakup and pre-Kim Kardashian. Davidson, for his part, also doesn't understand the intense media fascination on his love life. "I'm in my 20s and I've dated people," Davidson said on Jon Bernthal's Real Ones podcast in March. "And for some reason, that is very crazy and interesting to people. I don't think it's that interesting."

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