We all know that it can be difficult to bounce back from any kind of major disappointment in life, and that includes those of a romantic kind. Such a situation can be even harder when you're a celebrity, especially if your romantic life has already been the subject of gossip or topic of conversation whenever you happen to be interviewed. Celebrity IOU: Joyride co-host Ant Anstead surprised fans when word started circling that he'd begun dating Oscar winner Renée Zellweger earlier this summer. Now that the duo has (sorta) gone Instagram official, though, Anstead seems to have a strategy for handling all those questions about dating Zellweger: dodging them altogether.
As those of you who pay attention to news in the world of either celebrity relationships or HGTV stars will know, Ant Anstead is just a about a year removed from his breakup with Flip or Flop and Christina on the Coast star Christina Haack. So, while fans are surely glad to see that he seems to have found someone else to complete his romantic life, that doesn't mean that dealing with questions about the new relationship is easy, particularly when there have been multiple paparazzi shots of Anstead and Zellweger out, about, and kissing.
When Anstead spoke with Page Six recently about his Discovery+ show, he had this to say when peppered with questions about his personal life:
I’d like to think that I try and keep myself authentic and relatively transparent and it feels like it should be an interview about a car show!
I mean, I don't hate that Anstead just shut down this line of questioning, seeing as how he wasn't willing to talk about it right then. In late August, after several of those shots of he and Zellweger came out, he did open up a bit and say that "Renee and I have become quite close" during another interview, but, so far, that's the most we've gotten from either of them on the matter.
It must be a hard thing to be in the public eye, but still want some privacy, especially when you're embarking on a new relationship after a very public (and probably very hard) divorce, so dodging questions makes just as much sense as anything.
While Zellweger has been in several high profile relationships before, and likely learned long ago not to discuss her romances in public too much, Anstead is coming off of his first really public whirlwind romance with Haack. The two began dating after she split from her Flip or Flop co-host, Tarek El Moussa, and married not long after. Then, in late September 2020, they split after having one child and being married less than two years.
Anstead had made several appearances on Christina on the Coast, and the couple had been pretty open about their relationship, so it's easy to see why he'd want to keep some of his time with Zellweger between them and their close friends and family. In fact, Anstead went even further in his comments to Page Six, when asked if he's the happiest he's been in a while, and noted:
That’s unquantifiable, come on! Life’s a rollercoaster and you ride the lows and the highs. I’m incredibly grateful for the highs and I’m actually grateful for the lessons learned in the lows.
Maybe, at some point, Ant Anstead will talk more about both his highs and the lessons he learned from his lows, but, for now, he's keeping both aspects of his relationship with Renée Zellweger to himself as much as possible.
