Charm is an inherited trait, it would seem, in the Trudeau family tree.
From Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott to Justin Pierre James.
The good looks, though, Justin fils got from his mother, Margaret.
For nearly a decade JT beguiled Canadian voters, until they’d had a bellyful of him. But he sure appeared to be cranking up the charisma on a dinner date with pop star Katy Perry this week.
The couple — way too premature to label them as such — first blipped on the romance radar in photos and video obtained by TMZ, enjoying a fine dining experience at a trendy bistro in Montreal, preceded by a dog-walking stroll (Perry brought the pooch) at Mount Royal Park, trailed by private security muscle. Though Perry wore a big straw hat, perhaps to shield her face, the duo seemed otherwise unconcerned about attracting public attention, certainly weren’t trying to keep their apparent hookup on the down-low.
During the two hours they spent at Le Violon, tucking into lobster and other tasty edibles, gazing into each other’s baby blues, their demeanour was variously described as intense, animated, relaxed, chatty, just chilling, suggestive, flirty and flattery.
Lip-readers and body-language interpreters have had a field day deciphering their dinner conversation. PR bumpf that just landed in my inbox discloses that “forensic lip-reader’’ Nicola Hickling — she’s done Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Kylie Jenner, Timothée Chalamet and “The Royals’’ with her weird niche talent — decoded the following:
Katy Perry’s mouth “clearly shapes the phrase, ‘As long as we can stay the night together.’ ’’
Justin Trudeau responds with a “firm but subtle’’ head shake, the kind that telegraphs, “not now’’ or “let’s be careful.’’
Well, I can analyze the video and pull all sorts of chatter out of my backside, too.
What I wondered right off the hop is how these two, if they are indeed seeing one another, connected? Is there a celebrity dating app? Did Perry swipe right? Did his peeps ring up her peeps? The Canadian actress Kim Cattrall, who briefly dated Justin’s father, once revealed: “I asked myself, how do you go about getting a date with the prime minister and then I just decided to call him and ask for one.’’ How she got PET’s number was not explained.
Papa Trudeau of course famously dated Barbra Streisand. In her 2023 published memoir, “My Name is Barbra,’’ the megawatt chanteuse/actress/writer/director devoted an entire chapter to her mutually infatuated liaison with Pierre. While they remained friends for decades, a love match was never in the stars. “My brain was in love but not my body,’’ Streisand wrote, somewhat regretfully.
Trudeau the Elder plied the romance waters with a string of marquee actresses, including Margot Kidder at the height of her “Superman’’ fame, before and after his marriage to 29-years-younger Margaret. And Maggie was no dating slouch, either. In her party-girl phase, as she recounted in her 1982 book “Consequences,’’ when she train-wrecked her marriage by tripping the light fandango at Studio 54, partying with the Rolling Stones at the El Mocambo, generally making an cringe-y spectacle of herself, she had leg-overs with Jack Nicholson, Ryan O’Neal and Lou Rawls.
I wouldn’t describe Justin as a ladies’ man. More a metrosexual with a streak of vanity a yard wide and a handsy tendency, at least according to a reporter who accused him of groping her at a fundraiser festival at the turn of the millennium. “I don’t feel that I acted inappropriately in any way,’’ Justin, self-identified feminist, responded when the story broke 18 years later. “But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently and this is part of the reflections that we have to go through.’’
In any event, it’s been two years since Justin separated from Sophie Grégoire, his wife of nearly two decades and mother of their three children. It’s about time he did begin dating again and Perry seems a good place to start. Amidst the turbulence of 2025 — wars, tariffs, catastrophic floods and wildfires, endless Donald Trump — a purported romance between boldface tabloid personages provides an antidote for despair.
Perry, meanwhile, last month announced her separation from actor Orlando Bloom after seven years and one daughter together. Although I can’t now find it, I do recall seeing a photo of Perry and Bloom canoeing in the buff. Maybe I just dreamt it. Given that Justin is as outdoors-loving as his dad, and that Pierre Berton once defined a Canadian as “someone who knows how to make love in a canoe,’’ this activity might make for a great second date. (A data search turns up only a photo of Bloom paddleboarding naked whilst on vacation with Perry in Italy. That clip broke the internet, displaying as it did Bloom’s jaw-dropping manhood. Bloom modestly called it “an optical illusion.’’)
Once — and still, to be fair — a hugely popular pop princess, the “I Kissed a Girl’’ singer has been having a rough go of it, quite apart from the collapsed engagement with Bloom — and just to remind, an earlier divorce from Russell Brand, the controversial stand-up comic and comedic actor who in April was charged with rape, indecent assault and sexual assault related to four women between 1999 and 2005. But Brand lost his mind well before police laid charges, transformed toxic and “cancelled” for his reactionary politics and nutbar conspiracy theories.
Last year, Perry’s new album “143’’ was named the worst-scoring record ever on the review aggregation site Metacritic — “boring’’ and “pop trash.’’ The Lifetimes Tour that brought her to Montreal — Trudeau bopped at her show on Wednesday with daughter Ella-Grace — has been savaged on social media for its overwrought high-concept design and the singer’s klutzy dancing. Perry was also mercilessly mocked for her “tone-deaf’’ 11-minute rocket ship excursion 100 kilometres above Earth, part of a Blue Origin all-female flight on April 14.
So maybe this buzzy date with Justin was just a publicity stunt, massaging the rep, changing the dial. Didn’t hurt Trudeau none either: Pop space cadet meets pol space cadet.
Or “Roar’’ as she done sung it.
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