All you really want is for your loved one to publicly yet subtly imply that you are their muse, the wind beneath their wings.
I Want What They Have: Bo Burnham and Lorene Scafaria
Love is a many-splendored thing, especially when you’re gawking at it from the outside. In this new column, we’ll be examining the celebrity couples that give us hope for our own romantic futures and trying to learn what we can from their well-documented bonds.
I know I just wrote about desperately craving the attention that Kanye West and Irina Shayk are getting for their brand-new dalliance, but the latest object of my vicarious relationship obsession is way, way more down-to-earth. (What can I say? I contain multitudes.) It's true that comedian Bo Burnham is getting plenty of plaudits lately for his brand-new Netflix special Bo Burnham: Inside, but his long-running relationship with his girlfriend, Hustlers director Lorene Scafaria, is the rare celeb coupling that manages to fly relatively under the radar.
Burnham and Scafaria have been together since 2013, and while the circumstances of their meeting aren't widely known, Burnham dedicated Bo Burnham: Inside to Scafaria, writing in a message near the end of the credits, "for lor, for everything." I die! This is, quite literally, the dream, as far as dating a professional creative person goes; all you really want is for them to publicly yet subtly imply that you are their muse, the wind beneath their wings, and the reason they are able to Make Art.
The Bo Burnham: Inside credits weren't the first time Burnham publicly expressed his dedication to Scafaria. When he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay for Eighth Grade—a film that continues to make me well up in floods of tears if I so much as think about it, even though it came out in 2019—Burnham brought Scafaria as his date and noted her in his speech, saying, "I was inspired to do this by watching her work, so thank you." Scafaria's Hustlers was tragically robbed at the Oscars and at most major awards shows, a topic I'm still too angry to get too deep into (justice for J. Lo and her giant fur coat!), but had she won, I'm sure she would have mentioned Burnham just as glowingly in her speech.
Burnham and Scafaria love one another from opposite ends of a twelve-year age difference, with Scafaria being the older one, and even more excitingly, they're members of the exclusive height-gap-relationship club. Scafaria is 5'2, while Burnham is 6'4, making every photo op of them look faintly ridiculous—and completely adorable. BRB, manifesting this "equally talented artists with non-overlapping interests and an extreme height difference" energy for my next relationship.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Emma Specter
