Phoebe Dynevor has reflected on the life lesson she learned from her time dating Pete Davidson.
In a new interview with Elle, the Bridgerton star said that her six-month relationship with the Saturday Night Live comedian was a “very surreal” experience, due to the intense scrutiny the pair faced around that time.
“It just goes back to being naïve—I didn’t think anyone would care,” she told the magazine. “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. You realise, ‘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.”
Phoebe and Pete began dating March 2021, a few months after the Netflix period drama first began streaming, before parting ways that August.
She explained: “This whole world that I was opened up to was really intimidating. 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.”
Of the lessons she learned from that time, Phoebe said: “People are going to make up whatever story that they want to make from a few pictures, that’s fine.
“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.”
Phoebe – whose mum is Coronation Street legend Sally Dynevor – first began performing professionally as a child actor in the British teen drama Waterloo Road.
Since her rise to global fame as Daphne Basset in Bridgerton, she’s appeared in the film The Colour Room and is about to star in the erotic thriller Fair Play opposite Solo’s Alden Ehrenreich.
Read her full Elle interview here.