Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry have been one of the most talked-about couples on the planet since they were first spotted together last summer.
On Monday night, they took things a step further, making their official red carpet debut as a couple at the Tribeca Festival premiere of Perry’s concert film, Katy Perry: The Lifetimes Tour – Live from Paris, in New York.
And if there was any question about where the former prime minister and pop star’s relationship stands, they answered it pretty clearly.
The two have been together nearly a year now, ever since they were spotted having dinner at Le Violon in Montreal last July. But Monday marked their first official red carpet appearance as a couple, and they didn’t exactly play it cool.
Trudeau was spotted resting his hand on Perry’s stomach and caressing her backside as they posed for photographers.
Perry later posted a TikTok of the two of them embracing, all dressed up, and it didn’t take long to start circulating.
Inside, Trudeau watched the film from the audience — which he told Entertainment Tonight was technically his first time actually seeing the show. The 54-year-old has attended three of her concerts, he explained, but spent them admiring her rather than the performance.
During the screening he was spotted dancing along to “Firework,” clapping through a crowd singalong of “Crush,” and at one point when the power cut out mid-song and the audience kept singing anyway, he reached over and took Perry’s hand as she took it all in.
The Q&A after the film was where Perry really opened up. As per USA Today, she told the crowd she is “very in love” while looking over at Trudeau, and described him as the anchor she didn’t know she needed. “I’m a little bit like a rainbow kite,” she said. “I fly super high and sometimes I need to be anchored. So to have that anchor finally makes me feel really whole now.” She also called him the love of her life, which the room received about as warmly as you’d expect.
Perry has been candid about how difficult the past year has been. Her split from Orlando Bloom, with whom she shares five-year-old daughter Daisy, came last June, right around when she and Trudeau first crossed paths in Montreal.
The 41-year-old described the year as “probably one of the hardest of my life” but said she kept going because of promises she made to her fans, her daughter and herself. “I walked through the fire,” she said. “On the other side of hell, there’s definitely heaven” — turning to look at Trudeau as she said it.
In the roughly eleven months since that first dinner at Le Violon, things have moved at a pretty steady pace.
Trudeau showed up at Perry’s Bell Centre show just days after they met, paparazzi caught them kissing on a yacht in California by October, and they celebrated her birthday together in Paris in November. A diplomatic trip to Japan followed shortly after. By February they were back in Montreal having dinner at Leméac in Outremont, where Trudeau told another diner they were having a private moment after she tried to get a photo with Perry. They also hit up Coachella , where Trudeau showed up in a backwards Montreal Alouettes cap and handed the internet approximately one week’s worth of content.
A source cited by US Weekly has said Trudeau would like Perry to spend part of the year at his newly-purchased $3.1-million Outremont home. Based on what both of them had to say Monday night, that conversation is probably already happening.