Until recently, Joe Jonas was enjoying a resurgence of popularity brought on by the massive Jonas Brothers tour that’s currently shuttling across North America. The goodwill buoyed by screaming fans at the band’s sold-out shows came to a halt, however, shortly after TMZ reported last week that Jonas and his wife, Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner, were splitting up.
Jonas officially filed for divorce on Tuesday, and the couple promptly released a bland joint statement on Instagram insisting it was a “united decision.” But it was too late: internet sleuths searching for clues and drama had already picked apart their relationship, with Jonas, in many people’s eyes, emerging as the villain of the story.
One viral tweet spread an unconfirmed rumor that Jonas had called off his and Turner’s engagement the night before their wedding, and that he later married the actress in Las Vegas just to get her to “shut up.” Meanwhile, many other tweets zoomed in on Jonas’ long dating history, including reports that he first asked out model Gigi Hadid, whom he later dated, when he was 21 and she was 13.
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Turner and Jonas, who have two young children, first met when the actress was 20 years old; they got engaged the following year, when she was 21 and he was 28. At the time, the British star told Rolling Stone she was certain she’d found the right person, and that she felt she was “much older a soul than I am in age.”
The couple’s age gap and Jonas’ dating history was already being heavily scrutinized by the internet when a slew of news stories, all of which painted Turner in a negative light, began to trickle out this week.
“She likes to party, he likes to stay at home,” a source told TMZ. “They have very different lifestyles.” That anonymous comment prompted waves of scalding online discourse, with many arguing that such a remark vilifies Turner by playing into the sexist edict that mothers aren’t allowed to have fun.
A Page Six headline that read, “Sophie Turner spotted downing shots at bar days before Joe Jonas filed for divorce,” only moved that narrative forward, with the accompanying article making note of Turner’s “wild night” of “knocking back booze” with her friends.
Still, some people have attempted to defend Turner amid the negative press. “She got married at 23, had her first child at 24 and her second at 26, all of which happened pretty much instantly after her finishing filming Game of Thrones,” opinion writer Rebecca Reid wrote in inews. “It should come as a shock to literally no one that after half a decade of popping out babies and a global pandemic, she wants to focus on her career and, God forbid, maybe have a few drinks with some mates.”
The string of stories painting Turner in an unfavorable light didn’t stop there; another vague TMZ report on Wednesday claimed that Jonas saw footage of her on a Ring camera that “captured Sophie saying and/or doing something that made him realize the marriage was over.”
Now, after a couple days of pushback against Jonas—who many on the internet, even Bethenny Frankel, have accused of launching a smear campaign against his wife—it appears the 34-year-old may instead be focused on padding out his own image. Later on Wednesday, the singer was photographed taking his two young daughters to breakfast in Sherman Oaks, looking every bit the doting father for his first public appearance since the divorce news broke.
And Turner, for her part, seemed to score a minor PR victory on Thursday when yet another TMZ story about her and Jonas emerged. This one claimed that the rocker was “less than supportive” when Turner struggled after the birth of their second child and didn’t want to attend events or even be photographed. Jonas complained, TMZ’s source said, and told his wife that she needed to get out more. Turner did indeed end up making several public appearances during that time, but several sources claim that at one event in particular, she was visibly uncomfortable and clearly didn’t want to be there.
As far as Twitter, TikTok, and Frankel are concerned, Turner currently has the upper hand in the court of public opinion. As for Jonas, he’s slated to be on tour with his brothers through June of 2024, so maybe that’ll wear him down from focusing on the PR tussle between him and his soon-to-be ex-wife. It certainly seems like a better use of his time.
