Rita Ora “chose to not acknowledge” the talk of a “throuple” when photos were published in 2021 showing her, Rita’s now-husband Taika Waititi, and Tessa Thompson engaging in some steamy PDA. Rita, 32, kept quiet because she thought that talk was “ridiculous,” she told GQ. “Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve had a lot of drinks, and everyone’s your best friend? And then the next day, you’re like, ‘I was talking to this person in the smoking area for four hours, and I’ve got no idea who they are?’ Literally – that [photo] was just a bunch of friends having a good time. They [Taika and Tessa] had a crazy schedule, and everyone was letting loose. I love that. Each to their own.”
Taika, 47, and Rita, who married in August 2022, have dealt with the public scrutiny of their relationship. This side effect of fame, she told GQ, has resulted in “moments where it’s been unbearable, and I’m like, ‘Maybe this isn’t worth it.’ But you don’t want to give up your dream and everything you’ve done to get to this point for a moment in time that will eventually just move on. You don’t want to bite the bait and ruin everything you’re doing. You’re doing the dream job. I sing for a living. It’s insane. It’s not a normal job.”
Rita also spoke about when she knew the What We Do In The Shadows director was the right person for her. “When I didn’t feel a change, like my life just became better,” she says. “We were really good friends for six years, and I went to Australia, and we both had separate jobs, and we didn’t really know that many people out there. It was nice to see a familiar face, and our universes just collided. That was it.”
Taika spoke about the “throuple” photos in a July 2021 interview with The Sydney Morning Herald. When asked whether or not the photos upset him, he shrugged it off. “Not really. I think in the world of the internet, everything goes away pretty quick,” he said. He also added that he thought the photos were no big deal. “I was doing nothing wrong. It’s fine.”
Shortly before Rita spoke about the “throuple” photos, she also put to rest the rumors that she’s the “Becky with the good hair” referenced in Beyonce’s Lemonade. In 2016, she shared a Snapchat clip of her wearing a lemon-printed bikini top with a front-snapped that looked like the letter “J,” leading the Bey-hive to think it stood for Bey’s husband, Jay-Z. “Oh my god, it literally was a coincidence,” she said on the Louis Theroux Interviews podcast. “It wasn’t a J, it was an R. They flipped it ’round and then it looked like a J. … I had to just sit through that until a good friend of mine, Katy Perry, gave me a hilarious badge that said ‘not Becky.'”