Talk about a Valentine’s Day plot twist.
When celebrating the romantic holiday on Feb 14, Eric André, 39, appeared to confirm his romance with Emily Ratajkowski, 31, when he posted two NSFW photos of himself shot by the model.
But now, a source close to Emily exclusively tells E! News that the actress actually “broke up with Eric days before he posted that photo,” adding, “She had nothing to do with the posting.”
In fact, Emily never posted or reposted the shot on or after Valentine’s Day.
In an interview with Rolling Stone published March 14, Eric said Emily took the picture when he was “in the moment.”
“I was drinking wine, she started dying laughing, and she was like, ‘I have to take a picture of this,'” he recalled to the publication. “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.”
In the weeks before Valentine’s Day, Emily and Eric kept fans guessing about their relationship status. The pair was seen stepping out together on multiple occasions, including at a New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets basketball game on Feb. 13.
But just when fans thought Cupid had struck, Emily posted a cryptic TikTok about a “situationship” coming to an end.
“What should you do when a situationship ends?” the model captioned her video on Feb. 18, which was scored by a quote about partying from 2019’s The Peanut Butter Falcon. “Start another one.”
And in a recent episode of her podcast, Emily—who was photographed spending time with Pete Davidson last fall—made it clear that she wasn’t looking for anything serious.
“I’ve been trying to casually date and not get booed up, not get cuffed up and it’s been hard to do that and be kind of mindful of the people that I’m seeing, because I don’t necessarily want to know when they’re going on another date,” she said on the Jan. 26 episode of High Low With Em Rata. “It’s been really hard, because basically, any time I go on another date, everybody knows, so the other guys I’m dating see it, and it has been kind of difficult.”
The attention is something Eric said he witnessed when he was briefly linked to the model. He said his biggest fear, however, was Emily’s protection from the scrutiny.
“It’s more about how I feel concerned for her safety and the safety of others at her level who deal with that,” he told Rolling Stone. “She’s handled it with grace.”
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