Yes, Jimmi Simpson‘s girlfriend is VERY young for him… but she swears it wasn’t grooming! And she’s blaming some of the misinformation out there on a vindictive “stalker”!
OK, so you probably know Jimmi from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, where he plays Liam McPoyle, a chaotic weirdo even by Paddy’s standards. Or maybe you know him from being the star of the first season of Westworld. Or in Psych. Or House of Cards. You’ve 100% seen him in something, he’s been bouncing around Hollywood as a character actor for a long time. A LONG time. He’s 49 years old now. His girlfriend? Director Kyra Gardner is just 27. Yeah, that’s a gap alright. But what some are accusing him of is way worse.
Related: Channing Tatum’s New Girlfriend ‘Makes Him Happy’ After Ex Zoë Kravitz Moved On
It all started when Kyra jumped onto the “she doesn’t know it yet” trend in which women posted clips of themselves before a life-altering event. She wrote on a video of herself from a premiere in 2022 in which she was prepping to interview actors on the red carpet:
“She doesn’t know it yet, but she’ll meet the love of her life that night, and is actually looking at a photo of him on the paper she’s holding.”
That guy was Jimmi. Cute, right?
@_kyramyra_ This trend is so sweet and I realized I actually had footage of this day ???? #couple #soulmate #fy
♬ DIM – Yves
Not cute to some commenters!
Some were icked out to find out the 27-year-old was dating the much older actor. One wrote:
“The love of your life is 2 decades older than you?”
If you want to criticize the age gap, it’s nothing Kyra hasn’t heard before. But then she saw a bunch of comments that said it was something worse: grooming!
Her video actually went viral, being viewed millions of times, as people started accusing him of meeting her as a teenager and grooming her! Gross! But the director blasted all of that, explaining the “Reddit gossip” was all from one source — her STALKER! She wrote:
“Wow this blew up overnight.. I WILL be deleting any false comments. There are flaws accusatory Reddit pages of a STALKER of mine that are FALSE. Jimmi and I started dating when I was 26. Our stalker is weirdly claiming I’ve known him since I was 16 and he was friends with my dad.”
Whoa, that would be icky! But Kyra says it’s all BS:
“FALSE. My dad didn’t even know who he was and I had to introduce THEM while at work… I met him BRIEFLY interviewing him for my job on this film. I was 22. Never interacted again until re-meeting this night. Didn’t start dating til I was 26. It’s an age gap but certainly not grooming.”
Kyra would have been 24 at that premiere, of the horror film Studio 666, in February 2022. And not dating until she was 26 years old? None of this remotely sounds like “grooming.” This is a woman in her early 20s — she may be choosing to date an older guy, but we can’t blame her for being annoyed people are infantilizing her by calling it “grooming.” Especially since it’s based on false info!
She went on to blast commenters for spreading the rumor without fact-checking:
“Every1 wanting to push that false narrative is gross & I don’t know why you WANT it to be a grooming story. Please read more than the 2 minutes of REDDIT gossip before making assumptions about people.”
22 years is a big age gap, if you still want to judge. But come on, y’all, judge based on the actual facts! It’s only fair!
BTW, Jimmi was previously married to Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey. They were together basically all the way through the 2000s. The two are still good friends. He was also briefly married to actress Sophia Del Pizzo from 2019 to 2021.
What do YOU think of this new relationship?
[Image via Kyra Gardner/Instagram/MEGA/WENN.]
The post <i>Always Sunny</i> Star's MUCH Younger Girlfriend Swears Relationship Didn't Start As 'Grooming' appeared first on Perez Hilton.
