How an Angelina Jolie Interview Led to a TV Host Dumping Her Boyfriend on Live TV

Angelina Jolie has an incredible amount of star power – enough to break up someone else’s entire relationship. British TV host Alex Jones recently shared a story about how a potential interview with Jolie became so contentious that she ended up breaking up with her boyfriend on the air. Jolie may not even have been aware of the chaos she left in her wake.

Alex Jones is an entertainment reporter known in the U.K. for appearing on shows like Rise on Channel 4 and interviewing some of the biggest stars in the world. She shared some stories from her time in the industry in a new interview with the Dish podcast last month, including her on-air breakup. She said that in 2002 when an opportunity to interview Jolie came up, her then-boyfriend Steve Jones lied to get the job instead of her.

“Normally they would call in the morning and ask to come and do an interview or a junket,” Alex explained. “I was staying in his flat at the time when I was working in London and he picked up the landline and said ‘Al’s not here. She’s not feeling well, she’s had to go back to Cardiff.’ I was in Topshop.”

Steve’s lie worked, as Alex said: “So he did the interview.” It even had the desired effect in some ways – according to a report by The Daily Mail, the interview with Jolie was one of the main reasons Steve landed a job as a weekend correspondent on T4 in 2003. However, it also led Alex to break up with him and to shock him on the red carpet.

“And so I got back to the flat and was like, where is he? Hours went past, nobody answering their phones and in the end thought, right I’m going to drive back to Cardiff, because I don’t know where you are, you’ve probably gone to the pub,” Alex recounted on another podcast, Thanks a Million. “And then the production company called, and they were like, we’ve got bit of a situation. Tomorrow morning your boyfriend is going to the premiere with Angelina Jolie and it it would be really funny if you came on the line, live on the show and surprise him and said that you know exactly what he’s been up to.”

Once she had been filled in, Alex was eager to turn the tables on Steve. She agreed to cover the red carpet and she even confronted him in front of the cameras. She remembered: “So, on live telly, I’m like ‘You lied to me, where have you been?’ So yeah, not surprisingly, we split up live on telly.” Alex and Steve had been dating from 1999 to 2002 and both were rising stars, though fans may not have realized at the time how much drama they stirred up behind the scenes.

Fortunately, Alex and Steve were able to clear the air years later. They reunited years later to co-host Let’s Dance for Comic Relief and rekindled a strong friendship. Steve is now engaged to be married to Phylicia Jackson-Jones, while Alex married Charlie Thomson in 2015. They have three children together.