New celeb couple alert! Or, at least, a celebrity friendship. Over the weekend, Joshua Jackson and Simone Ashley were spotted enjoying each other’s company in NYC, sparking rumors of a new romance.
Joshua and Simone were photographed walking side-by-side around the city on Saturday, though it’s unclear if it was a date or just a friendly hang. Granted, whatever the case may be, they make a bit of a surprising twosome.
The Dawson's Creek star has been a staple of American pop culture since he was a kid starring in The Mighty Ducks, while Simone only recently shot to fame with her starring role in Bridgerton season 2. And it doesn’t seem like the two have ever worked together. They do, however, have at least one thing in common: Both are currently filming movies in NYC—with Joshua reuniting with his Dawson's Creek co-star Katie Holmes in Happy Hours and Simone busy filming The Devil Wears Prada 2.
So how did these two even meet? I'm not exactly sure, but I did discover this photo of the two of them from 2020:
The pic was taken at the Dunhill x Dylan Jones Pre-BAFTA Filmmakers Dinner in January of 2020—a month before Simone’s Bridgerton casting was announced and just as Joshua was starting promotion for Hulu's Little Fires Everywhere.
At the time, Joshua was married to Jodie Turner-Smith, with whom he shares a five-year-old daughter. The actors divorced in 2023, and since then, Joshua has been keeping his dating life relatively out of the public eye—despite reportedly dating Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o.
Simone, meanwhile, has always been more discreet in her private life. She previously dated Constantin “Tino” Klein for a few years, starting in 2022. She confirmed that she was single in January.
