Earlier this year, dating rumours swirled over the possibility of a romance between Angelina Jolie and Akala, after he and Jolie were seen walking together during the Venice Film Festival.
In August, they were both on the red carpet at the London premiere of her new film, Maria, dressed in co-ordinating black outfits.
It would all be quite compelling, were it not for Akala’s long-term partner, Chanelle Newman, with whom he runs a production company. According to the Mail Online, during an appearance at a Christmas party at a London hotel in November, Akala introduced Newman as his “girlfriend” to fellow guests.
Despite his existing long-term relationship, reports over the past year have suggested that Akala is the man helping Jolie heal from her “bitter” split from Brad Pitt. The acrimonious uncoupling of Jolie and Pitt has been ongoing for eight years, and has involved domestic assault allegations and accusations of enforced NDAs, as well as a war over their highly successful rosé vineyard.
Sources confirmed to People that Jolie and Akala are indeed just pals, and that Jolie “is friends with him and his partner, Chanelle [Newman] who was also there [at the Venice Film Festival]”.
The now-debunked rumours began in May last year, when Akala joined Jolie and her daughters Zahara, 19, and Shiloh, 18, at the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica. The author was said to have been “very protective of [Jolie and her daughters] as he shepherded them around.”
Akala, the British rapper, author, activist and brother of fellow rapper Ms. Dynamite, is however only friends with Jolie.
It’s not a particularly unlikely friendship: Akala and Jolie are both passionate activists with their own production companies (Immovable Studios and Jolie Pas) and high levels of influence.
Akala is a Sunday Times bestselling author — thanks to his book Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire — who routinely features on the annual Powerlist of the 100 most influential Black British people in the UK, and Jolie is a Hollywood A-lister and former Special Envoy to the United Nations.
“They share the same passion when it comes to social and humanitarian causes,” a source confirmed to People. “They did several collabs over the years that focus on global issues like human rights. Angie speaks very highly of him.”
The rumours — which intensified when Akala appeared in a photograph posted to the Instagram account of Jolie’s fashion brand Atelier Jolie in September — come amid ongoing legal disputes between Jolie and Pitt, who have been warring over their divorce settlements ever since they split back in 2016.
Jolie has hinted at how she’s struggled emotionally during and since the split, including during an interview this week at Venice Film Festival. After a reporter asked her about her current music taste, she said: “As I have gotten older I have listened to classical music and opera. I think I still love the music I did when I was younger, I would still listen to The Clash.
“But I think when you have felt a certain level of despair, of pain, of love at a certain point there are only certain sounds that can match that feeling and to me the immensity of the feeling encapsulated in the sounds of opera - there is nothing like it.
“That feeling that would move all of us if we were to hear it would be the only sound that would explain that pain, so I have leant more towards it now.”
