“I don’t kiss and tell, bro!” Eric Andre said of his relationship with Emily Ratajkowski when discussing life and the upcoming season of The Eric Andre Show with Rolling Stone’s Marlow Stern. Eric, 39, acknowledged his brief relationship with Emily, 31, certainly “made headlines,” especially the Valentine’s Day Instagram post where they both posed naked. “Emily popped up and took that picture,” said Eric. “I was really in the moment: I was drinking wine, she started dying laughing, and she was like, ‘I have to take a picture of this.'”
“She took the picture, we both started cracking up, and she was like, ‘This is iconic’ — she kept saying ‘iconic.’ We both agreed this was a beautiful image that we had to share with the world,” said Eric. “And there wasn’t much thought behind it. It was one of those things. And I think that’s what art is about. Art is not intellectual; it’s primal. It has to speak to your hormones as much as it speaks to your mind. The beauty of that was the spontaneity. Spontaneity and capturing happy accidents are what art is all about.”
Emil and Eric were first romantically linked in January, following her short-lived relationship with Pete Davidson. The couple caught the public’s attention with beachside make-out sessions and strolls through New York City. However, at the end of February, Emily was spotted on an apparent date with DJ Orazio Rispo after posting a TikTok hinting that her and Eric’s “situationship” had ended.
Eric reflected on how this relationship was fodder for the press. “I think the think pieces and the mythology are more interesting than the reality,” he told RS’s Stern before discussing how it wasn’t great to be chased by photographers and reporters. “Paparazzi killed Princess Diana. It’s legalized stalking. There’s a darkness to it. It’s boundary-less and quasi-abusive, you know what I mean?”
“[Emily] has the right to her privacy,” continued Eric. “If she goes outside her house, they’re there. There should be some laws behind that. Yes, they can hide behind their First Amendment rights, but I don’t think that’s what the forefathers intended. I don’t give a f***; I have nothing to hide. But it’s more about how I feel concerned for her safety and the safety of others at her level who deal with that. She has a kid. It’s not safe. And it’s hard to complain about it because most people are like, ‘F*** you, it must be nice!’ But there’s a darkness to it. She’s handled it with grace.”
Eric also spoke about how some think pieces were astounded that he could pull someone like Emily. “‘How could this happen!’ No, man. I’m ugly. I looked like Steve Urkel for the first 20 years of my life. I think that people think attraction is only based on physical appearance, but beauty is only skin-deep. Colin [Jost] is married to Scarlett Johansson, and [John] Mulaney is married to Olivia Munn, so you’d think comedy … works.”