(As if to underscore this: A few days after I returned to the States, a friend sent me a link to a Daily Mail article containing nine pictures of Hiddleston and a “mystery brunette”—me—hugging, laughing, and bidding each other farewell. For the record, I was laughing about his Attenborough impression; I was hugging him because we were saying good-bye after two days and because: Tom Hiddleston!)

So yes, fake news is a thing, and now is the time to talk about it. This is the first time he’s talked about any of this, he says—about politics, news, anything beyond the scope of his roles. He used to politely beg off. But he sees that’s no longer an option. We can’t afford complacency anymore. Look what’s happened in the past year to the world’s most powerful democracies.

Which is why he’s decided to step into the fray himself, consequences be damned. “If you’re under attack,” he says, looking me square in the eye, his voice raw, “if your values are under attack, if you’re being shamed, if you’re being humiliated, the animal response is to hide in the bush. It’s to be less, to make yourself smaller, to diminish in size and volume. And the lesson of 2016 is we have to love more, we have to risk more, we have to be braver, we have to be more outspoken.”

It wasn’t until much later that night, after we’d parted, that I realized we had started talking about Taylor Swift long before we started talking about Taylor Swift.

Step Right Up to the Line: Yep, it’s almost black. Just like midnight blue is almost black. But the subtle distinction sets you apart. (Suit, $3,400, by Prada / Tie, $230, by Prada / Shirt, $165, by Boss / Shoes, $350, by To Boot New York DALiM We’re Feeling Rosy: Sometimes browns are closer to reds, which casualizes the whole vibe. (Suit, $3,395, by Ermenegildo Zegna / Shirt, $375, tie, $195, Ermenegildo Zegna / Shoes, $350, and socks To Boot New York / Bike courtesy of Lock 7 Cycle Cafe) DALiM

It is tempting to say that the union of Hiddleswift was cooked up in a panicked publicist’s office: That professional breakup lyricist Taylor Swift—who knew this very magazine was about to publish a story suggesting that maybe she hadn’t been so honest about whether she knew she’d be a lyric in Kanye’s “Famous,” that maybe there was even a videotape to prove it—urgently needed a professional, tactical, romantical distraction. That maybe a British actor who was trying to break through to an American audience sensed an opportunity to become something more here. Maybe those two urgent impulses led to them sitting on the rocks, having a perfect kissing moment, while a person with a camera stood not so far away and took pictures.

But—but—it is also equally possible that it was real. I mean, this happens, right? Beautiful people fall in love, don’t they? And these two made a kind of sense: They were similarly earnest and pale and high-rise and shiny. He had that James Dean daydream look in his eyes; she got his heart racing in her skintight jeans. Can we leave room for the notion that they fell in love?

It lasted three months. They ate dinner in restaurants; they traveled to England to meet his family, and to Australia, where he’d be shooting Thor: Ragnarok. But soon after that Australia trip, that was it, and we were left with only unconfirmed tertiary sources saying that Taylor did. not. like. how public he was with his affection, like, say, confirming their relationship to The Hollywood Reporter and generally walking around with a smile on his face like a man in love.

“Taylor is an amazing woman,” reads the prepared statement Tom Hiddleston has memorized and is now giving me at The Bull & Last, where his voice has gone low. “She’s generous and kind and lovely, and we had the best time.” But I didn’t ask that, I say. I asked something else. So I wait, and he says, “Of course it was real.”

I ask if he wants to say anything about Australia, about the Fourth of July party at which he donned that fateful tank top, about the rumors that she thought he was too eager. Does he want to say anything about any of it?

And here he puts down his fork, a bite of my steak still on it. He looks off into the middle distance, and here is what he says:

“The truth is, it was the Fourth of July and a public holiday and we were playing a game and I slipped and hurt my back. And I wanted to protect the graze from the sun and said, ’Does anyone have a T-shirt?’ And one of her friends said, ’I’ve got this.’ ” The friend pulled out the "I ♥ T.S." tank top that Taylor’s friends are contractually obligated to own. “And we all laughed about it. It was a joke.”

So that’s his statement on the entire relationship: an explanation of the tank top. “It was a joke,” he repeats. “Among friends.”

“I only know the woman I met. She’s incredible.” But, man, all those cameras. “A relationship in the limelight takes work. And it’s not just the limelight. It’s everything else.”

I can vouch for this depiction of Tom Hiddleston. He is definitely, without a doubt, someone who would put on an "I ♥ T.S." tank top, both to protect a scratch from sun damage and to make his new friends laugh while th—wait, sorry, he’s still talking:

“I have to be so psychologically strong about not letting other people’s interpretations about my life affect my life. A relationship exists between two people. We will always know what it was. The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context. Nobody had the context for that story. And I’m still trying to work out a way of having a personal life and protecting it, but also without hiding. So the hardest thing is that that was a joke among friends on the Fourth of July.”

He still isn’t looking at me. The last piece of my steak is now poised on his fork in mid-air. He is so sad, and I can’t take it anymore, so I put my hand on his and I say, “Tom, Tom, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about the tank top anymore. I got it. I understand. I’ll tell the world.” But he can’t stop talking about it. He literally cannot stop talking about it.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just, I was surprised. I was just surprised that it got so much attention. The tank top became an emblem of this thing.” It’s hard to tell me this, he says. He wants to trust me. He wants to trust that the world won’t use this to embarrass him again, but he doesn’t know. He just knows it will follow him until he talks about it.