Barry Keoghan Just Addressed The Sabrina Carpenter Cheating Rumors That Made Him Go Off Grid For 16 Months

Barry Keoghan is the Irish actor who broke out as the unsettling lead in Saltburn and earned an Oscar nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin. He dated Sabrina Carpenter, the pop star behind Espresso and Please Please Please, from late 2023 until December 2024.

When the relationship ended, a rumor spread online that he had cheated. He didn’t address it. He stopped posting. He stopped showing up. For more than a year he didn’t address it.

A TikTok account falsely named influencer Breckie Hill as the person he cheated with. Breckie denied it within days. Said she’d never even met him. Called it trolling for views.

The accusation spread. The denial didn’t.

Barry disappeared. Now he’s explaining why:

I have been avoiding stuff. I came off Instagram and social profiles. I’ve stopped going to events. I’ve stopped just socializing.

It’s because there was a narrative out there that was never really sort of even spoken on. A narrative that’s not true, and I never confirmed or said anything about it. I just disappeared.

I don’t want to ever bring anyone else into it. Unfortunately, having a relationship in the public eye, we all know this from our own stories. It gets put out there and it’s amplified.

—Barry Keoghan, on Friends Keep Secrets

This week he sat down on Friends Keep Secrets, the podcast hosted by Benny Blanco, Lil Dicky, and Kristin Batalucco, and finally said the rumor was never true.

He said he didn’t want to drag anyone else into a story that was already being amplified beyond his control. So he chose silence and lost a year and a half of his life to it.

He talked at length on the podcast about the cyberbullying that came with the rumor, including comments about his appearance, his upbringing, his late mother, and his young son.

“I feel in a safe space to say this,” he told the hosts. It was the first thing he said.