🔗 Share this article

Given his dad was involved with Barbra Streisand and his mom partied with the legendary rock band, it might not be a shock to see former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau romantically linked with American singer Katy Perry.

However it still causes surprise. “This was NOT on my 2025 bingo card,” remarked an entertainment news site in July, when the couple were first seen together in Montreal. A well-known magazine later labeled them “2025’s most surprising couple.”

Over the weekend, Trudeau, 53, and Perry were observed exiting a nightspot in Paris on Perry’s 41st birthday. They were walking hand-in-hand. No one has publicly commented, but the image is interpreted as the couple acknowledging they are indeed an item.

They enter a remarkably short list of public relationships between leaders and singers, which includes Justin’s father, Pierre, and Streisand, as well as a former politician with a singer.

Leader-actor relationships and marriages are more common: such as Rita Hayworth and a then-UN ambassador; John F Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe; Elizabeth Taylor and a US senator; and Pierre Trudeau – for a short time – with Kim Cattrall.

Every time, public interest has been extensive and intense, which annoys some who believe it is just celebrity gossip and should be overlooked.

But it is acceptable to be interested and to care, says a humorist who co-hosts a podcast on celebrity relationships.

“No matter how well-known you are, there are certain stages to life and a relationship that are exactly the same,” she said. “If you’re famous, they’re likely more sped-up or they’re more amplified.”

People cannot go around questioning neighbours or strangers about the dynamics of relationships – but they can read about celebrities and politicians.

“We all might start dating with somebody and we might progress too quickly, or we fall in love with the notion of the person, not the actual person, or they’re right for that time in your life but then you change so then it fails any more.

“When you look at celebrity couples, when you can really drill into the interactions of what happened, you can see it is ordinary existence.”

Celebrity relationships could shine a light on all sorts of issues, said the writer, whether self-doubts, careers before children – or just when it’s time to move on.

“The most relatable part of a famous person is their private life,” she said, whose podcast examines celebrity breakups.

Not one Perry nor Trudeau, commentators note, is at the top of their professional lives or lives.

Perry’s latest album, dropped four years after the previous one, was widely panned – although not maybe as terrible as claimed by some. Yes, it’s “common-or-garden mediocre pop,” wrote a reviewer, “but it’s certainly some way less than total catastrophe.”

The singer was also ridiculed for taking part in an women-only space mission.

In July, Perry and British actor Orlando Bloom announced they were splitting, six years after getting engaged. “She is fighting for significance,” said the writer. As is, arguably, Trudeau.

Elected as Canada’s prime minister in 2015, Trudeau announced in January that he was stepping down, effectively pushed by his own party.

In 2023, Trudeau and his wife, Sophie, disclosed they were parting ways after 18 years of marriage, following what they said were “significant and challenging conversations.”

Back in charge of his own online presence, one of Trudeau’s first Instagram posts was a photo of him browsing for kitchen supplies at a homewares outlet – “Gotta love a Monday morning,” he wrote, eliciting comment about the single father vibes he was giving off.

The Trudeau-Perry story has, naturally, led to people looking back on Trudeau Sr and his relationship with Streisand, and what a romance it could have become.

Pierre Trudeau was one of Canada’s most successful, charismatic and non-traditional politicians. He rode a motorcycle, liked skinny dipping and sliding down banisters, and wore casual footwear in the legislature.

Barbra Streisand was Barbra Streisand.

“Wow,” she wrote in her memoir about their first meeting. “I was fascinated by that dichotomy … the solemn politician and the free-spirited artist. Those two don’t usually go together.”

Streisand, whose marriage with actor Elliott Gould was on the rocks, was captivated by this “very dapper, intelligent, intense” man, a “kind of combination of Albert Einstein and Napoleon (only taller)”.

They became an item in 1969. “I remember one afternoon … I was lying with my head on his lap, while he was reading official papers and I was reading a script. I thought to myself, This is bliss.”

The one thing she was not looking for, however, was a new husband and having more children, both of which she believed Trudeau wanted.

What lies ahead for Trudeau Jr and Perry remains to be seen. They are fairly young but beyond their prime, argues the writer, both perhaps asking themselves what’s next. Might Trudeau and Perry be the next power couple? The next Harry and Meghan?

“There is a podcast coming, is what I’m saying,” she said. “A podcast and a foundation. I’m predicting it.”