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Austin Butler is on another press tour — and apparently, no journalist is safe from his natural charm. The actor has been making the red carpet and press junket rounds for his new film The Bikeriders and he simply cannot stop compulsively flirting with his interviewers. The thoughtful questions! The eye contact! The smouldering! The gravelly Elvis voice! It's a lot. Butler has successfully made each and every interviewer he speaks to visibly swoon — all while avoiding answering a single question.
Ok, Butler has been kind of flirty in interviews — well — forever. But he really kicked his flirtation game up a notch last week when he appeared on the red carpet of a premiere for The Bikeriders in Sydney, Australia. As he began talking to a 7Bravo reporter (who just so happened to be Lucia Hawley, aka Nicole Kidman's niece, by the way) he instantly got his smoulder on.
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“Hi, Austin, I'm Lucia,” she said. “Lucia, have we met before?” he replied, unabashedly whipping out one of the most iconic chat-up lines.
“Are you from here?” he went on. “Yes,” she said, adding, “I'm supposed to be interviewing you.” He replied, “I don't like talking about myself,” before proceeding to ask her how old she was (25) and what she was interested in (art). “Where do you find your art?” he said. “I should probably jump into the questions, 'cause this is my job,” she giggled.
They weren't the only celeb couple that linked up at the Dune after-party.
But this chemistry-filled convo was far from his last. In another interview in Sydney, a male journalist asked him, “When you get off that plane does it feel like home? Even though we speak funny?” Butler smiled and leaned in, before replying in his deep voice, “No, I don't even hear it anymore. I love the way you talk. Now I'm just flirting with you.”
Butler continued his flirtatious press tour when he spoke to Claire Rowden, an MTV reporter.
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Instead of talking about his film or himself, Butler spent most of the interview asking Rowden about her pet rabbit: “Is she super soft?” “Does she cuddle with you?” “Where does she sleep?”
Now, it's not as though flirting on the red carpet is anything new. In recent years, numerous actors have made headlines for having flirty interactions with each other during their press tours: Nicola Coughlan and Luke Newton, Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac, Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell — it's kind of a thing. But Butler has proven that he doesn't need a red carpet scene partner — he'll flirt with literally anyone who speaks to him. And honestly, it's kind of fascinating.
“My favourite thing I’ve noticed about Austin Butler recently is he just won’t answer an interviewer's question but will instead ask them a series of questions so authentically making them seem like the most interesting person in the room it seems I have grown so fond of him,” wrote one fan.
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Look out for it in 2024.
In fact, as another fan noted, people could learn a thing or two from Butler's flirty interviews. “People who think they can’t flirt watch and learn, this is a MASTERCLASS from Austin Butler,” wrote one fan. “I’m not even that mad on him and I didn’t even benefit from his SUSTAINED eye contact but I am ON THE FLOOR.”
But while Butler's recent interviews may seem like flirting masterclasses, there may be something deeper going on here. On fan on X suggested, “He's not flirting he just doesn't wanna be perceived so he perceives others," linking to a section of a New York Times interview. In the interview, Butler explained that his piercing, unrelenting eye contact is, in fact, not a conscious flirting tactic, but rather a technique he learned in an acting class to help him get past his shyness. “If every time I feel attention on me, I start to feel like I’m imploding, then I just need to put my curiosity onto the other person,” he said in the interview.
Whether Butler's steady, smouldering gaze is a shyness crutch or not, when combined with that husky Elvis voice (that simply will not go away), it's certifiably lethal. Entertainment reporters: be careful out there, because Austin Butler absolutely will flirt with you!
