Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples—or would-be couples—that give us hope for our own romantic futures, and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
I try to stay reasonably up-to-date on my Hugh Grant news, which is easy enough when said news tends to be along the lines of, “Hugh Grant steps out in London wearing a sweater” (likely place for him to be and likely item for him to be wearing). Yet we Hugh-heads have been blessed with all kinds of interesting news lately. Not only was it confirmed that Grant will reprise his iconic role as Daniel Cleaver in the upcoming fourth installment of the Bridget Jones’s Diary film series, but he is also at the center of a veritable kissing imbroglio this week. On Friday, Real Housewives of New York alum Luann de Lesseps reported that she and the 64-year-old actor had engaged in a little makeout at a Hamptons restaurant on some unspecified prior date.
“A girlfriend of mine called me and was like, ‘Hugh Grant is at Pierre’s.’ I said, ‘I’ll be right over.’ I called and said, ‘Get the table right next to Hugh Grant.’ I had my family over, my brother was visiting me, and I said, ‘Let’s go,’” de Lesseps told the site TooFab. “I pushed out my chair real fast, and I bumped into him—flirting 101—I bumped into him and said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ He knows who I am because I know Andy [Cohen]. I go, ‘I’m so sorry. Can I buy you a shot? I feel terrible.’ He goes, ‘Okay, but I’ll come have a shot with you if you do one with me.’ Before you know it, we are taking shots and making out…heavily at the table! My brother was like, ‘I can’t believe you’re making out with Hugh Grant,’ and I was like, ‘Neither can I.’”
Beautifully enough, Grant actually responded to de Lesseps’s memory of their alleged kissing session on Monday, writing on X: “Steady on. I do remember meeting a charming RHNY in a restaurant, but I’d like to stress it was about 15 years ago. I don’t recall shots or kissing, but her memory might be better than mine.”
De Lesseps, of course, then promptly told Us Weekly: “Obviously, my memory is better than his! He’s right, it was 15 years ago. We were both not married at the time. I had just divorced Alex [de Lesseps]. He was ever so charming and couldn’t have been nicer.”
I genuinely can’t decide which is the most iconic detail of this recollection. Is it de Lesseps’s race to Pierre’s in order to put herself in Grant’s path? Is it the thought of the two very different stars doing shots together? Is it Grant’s gentlemanly response and turbo-British use of the phrase “Steady on”? Honestly, if I ever publicly suggest that an internationally famous celebrity has drunkenly made out with me, I want him to let me down this easy (and, of course, leave a little room for plausible deniability). Grant has been married to television producer Anna Eberstein since 2018, and obviously, I want nothing but the best for them. But I cannot lie—part of me does wonder what kind of incredible RHONY content we might have been treated to had he followed de Lesseps down the garden path to reality TV fame.