Some celebrity romances are built on red-carpet kisses. This one was built on a sweater, an Instagram follow and two paparazzi photos taken a year apart. For a few weeks in late 2021 a good part of the internet was sure that Selena Gomez and Chris Evans were secretly dating. They were not, and by October 2026 both of them are married to other people. Here is how the rumor was assembled, piece by piece, and why none of the pieces held.
Where it started: one honest answer in 2015
The only first-hand statement in this whole story is six words long. In 2015, on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live, Selena Gomez said: “I kind of have a crush on Chris Evans.” That is the full record. She did not say they had met, talked or dated, and Evans never answered on air or anywhere else.
My view, as the person on this desk who reads the small print: a talk-show crush is the least romantic document in Hollywood. Half the people who sit on that couch name an actor when asked, and the actor usually finds out from the internet. Still, it gave fans a starting point, and the internet has done more with less.
The follow and the “same studio” photos
The rumor came back in October 2021, when fans noticed that Evans followed Gomez on Instagram. Nobody could say when he had pressed the button, and she did not follow him back. Then came the photos that seemed to clinch it: Gomez and Evans supposedly leaving the same Los Angeles recording studio, and later the same restaurant.
W Magazine checked them. The Gomez photo, in black overalls, had been online since at least 2019; the Evans photo was from 2020. Elle reported that one Evans picture was from 2017 and showed him leaving a Pilates class, not a studio. Two people in two different years, cropped side by side, is a collage, not a sighting. I have a rule for these: if the “proof” never shows both people in one frame, it is proof that someone owns a photo editor.
@hungvanngo Press day for @hotelt. Who’s going to watch January 14 on @amazonprimevideo?
The sweater that launched a thousand threads
On November 13, 2021, Taylor Swift posted a TikTok from backstage at Saturday Night Live with Gomez in it. Gomez wore a cream cable-knit sweater, and fans decided it was the one Evans wore as Ransom Drysdale in Knives Out (2019). Swift is known for hiding clues in plain sight, so the theory was that she was hinting at her friend’s new boyfriend.
The trouble is that a white cable-knit is not a fingerprint. After Knives Out the sweater became a winter staple, copied by shops everywhere, and Evans himself said on The Tonight Show in 2020 that he felt he could no longer wear one: “It’s a shame, I love cable knits. But now I feel like when I wear them people are like, ‘urgh.'” He even posted photos of his dog Dodger in a nearly identical knit. If a sweater were a relationship, Dodger would have been the first to be engaged.
Our 2023 version of this article also mentioned a TikTok in which fans saw a dark-haired woman’s reflection behind Evans and named her Gomez. I could not find that clip or anyone who identified the woman, so it stays where it belongs: out.
What actually happened next
Real life moved on quickly. In November 2022 it was confirmed that Evans was dating the Portuguese actress Alba Baptista. They married in September 2023 in an intimate ceremony in Massachusetts. Their daughter was born on October 24, 2025, in Massachusetts; several outlets reported her name as Alma Grace Baptista Evans. In March 2026 the couple made their first red-carpet appearance as parents at the Oscars.
Gomez’s own story went somewhere just as concrete. She confirmed her relationship with producer Benny Blanco in December 2023, announced their engagement on Instagram in December 2024, and married him on September 27, 2025, in Santa Barbara County, California, in front of about 170 guests, Taylor Swift and her Only Murders in the Building co-stars Steve Martin and Martin Short among them. She captioned her wedding photos “9.27.25”. Blanco commented: “My wife in real life.”
There is a nice symmetry in that comment. For years fans wrote Gomez a husband out of screenshots; the actual one turned up in her comments and spelled it out himself.
My take
Nothing in this story was malicious. It was hopeful: two well-liked people, one sweet confession on a talk show, and a fan base that wanted a happy ending for both. They each got one, just not with each other. The lesson I keep from it is the one I started with: a sweater, a follow and two old photos add up to a mood, not a relationship. When the real thing came, both of them said so in their own words. That is what a primary source looks like.
Sources
- Selena Gomez on Instagram: with Benny Blanco in Venice, September 2026
- Selena Gomez, Instagram (@selenagomez): engagement post (December 2024) and wedding post “9.27.25”
- W Magazine: Selena Gomez and Chris Evans dating rumors, explained (WWHL quote, studio photos)
- Business Insider: Chris Evans on The Tonight Show about cable-knit sweaters
- HollywoodLife: Selena Gomez’s sweater in Taylor Swift’s TikTok (November 2021)
- Grazia: Chris Evans, the Knives Out sweater and Dodger
- E! News: Chris Evans and Alba Baptista welcome their first baby
- E! News: Chris Evans and Alba Baptista’s baby name
- E! News: Chris Evans and Alba Baptista at the 2026 Oscars
- Vogue: Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco are married
