Andrew Garfield is on a media blitz. Social feeds are littered with clips of the Spiderman star flirting with Amelia Dimoldenberg on Chicken Shop Date; flirting with Florence Pugh on the press tour for their new film We Live in Time; crying on the Modern Love podcast about the transience of life and cooing over a litter of puppies who aren’t even cute in a BuzzFeed interview. Womankind has gone weak at the collective knees, spurred on by the news that Garfield recently split from his witch doctor girlfriend. They are calling him the consummate modern gent, the nemesis of the manosphere. But really, Garfield is championing a softboi renaissance and to me, it’s squirm-inducing and disingenuous.
I saw Garfield in the flesh last week at the UK premiere of We Live in Time – the one where he brought along a cardboard cutout of an absent Florence Pugh. He even hauled the thing onto the stage for a pre-film Q&A.
I soon discovered he is one of those people who says things which seem profound, but actually mean very little. During the Q&A, Garfield mused that his new release is “the kind of film that could be made with any other two actors and it would be something slightly different, and that’s remarkable.” Well, yes.
“There’s so much space for whichever actor happens to be inhabiting either of those characters to fill the blood vessels and the musculature and the heart and the mind with their own soul,” he continued, sounding like he might cry. He described the film as “radical” and said that he and Pugh gave “one performance,” before deciding that no, they actually created a “spiritual third”. Indeed, the pair had grown so close as to be “co-dependent”.
From the trailer I had assumed it was going to be a classic of the boy-meets-girl but then girl gets cancer genre (why is it always the girl?). But then here was Garfield suggesting it would be perhaps the most nuanced and stirring film to have ever graced our screens. Turns out I was right. I wasn’t even prepared for quite how many rom-com and cancer cliches there would be: the pair making out as they stumble through the front door, copious montages, the happy couple eating biscuits in the bath not once but twice — because this is a British rom-com, remember — and then bucket lists and heads shaved in solidarity. I don’t need to spoil the ending because you already know what’s going to happen. As I walked out, a sniffling woman behind me said to her friend “imagine seeing that film and not crying.” I looked back at her with my dry, puff-free eyes and she promptly turned to stone.
Garfield and Florence Pugh have been junketing hard and have perfected their double act. It’s all finishing each other’s sentences and bickering good-naturedly and erupting in gales of laughter at their super zany inside jokes. You can’t quite tell if they’re friends or flirting, but then in one interview, he’ll call her “baby”. The comments section is full of people waxing lyrical about their chemistry, but all I see is the two most annoying people at drama school being given too much airtime.
When he’s not giggling incessantly, Garfield often seems on the verge of tears. He actually did break down on the most recent episode of Modern Love, a New York Times podcast where celebrities read out essays about love and loss. “My wife hasn't worn a bikini for six years and probably never will again,” Garfield sniffs, voice quavering. “My parents no longer drive at night,” he continues, before becoming overcome with emotion.
When the host asks why the story has hit him so hard, Garfield wipes his eyes and speaks weepily about the importance of art, “because it can get us to places that we can’t get to any other way.” He hates that in our culture, we are taught to “calcify the heart,” and hiding our true feelings is a “modern conditioning taboo”.
I know I am meant to be on his side. I know we are meant to give men a big pat on the back when they show vulnerability. But come on, this is a podcast. Even the host says no one has ever stopped the reading halfway through like this to have a wail, though she is very “grateful to be able to witness it”.
“You’re holding lovely space for it, thank you,” Garfield responds. This man has had too much therapy.
Then, just when I thought Garf-mania had reached its peak, his long-awaited Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg dropped. Fans had been demanding the two get together ever since their flirty red carpet interactions.
Throughout the eleven-minute interview, Garfield is on peak softboi form. He says things like “I do believe in fate and destiny, do you know the difference?” and asks Dimoldenberg with doe-eyed sincerity whether she would like to get married and have kids. When she responds with her usual flippant questions, like “what’s your favourite time on a clock,” Garfield says in between wheezes of laughter, “I thought you meant style of time, like kairos or chronos!”
Amelia Dimoldenberg’s success as an interviewer is down to the fact that she doesn’t let celebrities get away with saying pretentious crap. But here she was, giggling away at Garfield showing off his knowledge of Ancient Greek timekeeping.
When Dimoldenberg says that she is often the one to ask a guy out, Garfield tells her she is “bold” and “courageous” and gives her a hi-five. “I really appreciate that so much, I think that’s sexy, I think that’s really hot,” he intones. This is classic softboi-ism, thinking it’s radical for women to act with agency and being determined that everyone should know you feel that way. Wait ‘til he hears about Bumble.
The episodes are all partially scripted so it’s hard to know how much of this is real, but it certainly fits with the persona that Garfield has created for himself.
Is this really what women want? Am I going to rot in hell for finding it all a little repellent? There is obviously nothing sexy about the kind of misogynistic, hyper-masc breed of man who is into Andrew Tate. But does the alternative have to be quite so annoying? I thought the unparalleled Instagram account @beam_me_up_softboi had done away with the scourge of the softboi, but it looks like their fortunes are on the turn.
