Justin Theroux is still promoting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the wildly popular Tim Burton film. Theroux joined the cast as the sleazy boyfriend to Winona Ryder’s Lydia. Justin also recently announced his engagement to Nicole Brydon Bloom, an actress 23 years his junior. Justin recently chatted about the engagement, the film and his ex Jennifer Aniston with the Times. I think the Aniston mention is obligatory at this point – he knows that people won’t stop asking about her, so he usually gives a vaguely supportive quote about her. Some highlights:

His engagement to Nicole Brydon Bloom. Theroux gave her a ring with both of their birthstones embedded in it and he grins bashfully when I bring it up. “Of course I was nervous proposing,” he says. “It is a question after all, so the answer isn’t guaranteed. But it was wonderful.”

On the original story of Beetlejuice trying to marry a teenage Lydia: Does he not find it creepy that in the first film Beetlejuice, who is more than 600 years old, was set on marrying 15-year-old Lydia? “Of course, yeah. It’s so funny that he holds a candle for her 36 years later.” But Theroux, 53, who is engaged to a 30-year-old, is too clever to be drawn on age-gap relationships.

On Jennifer Aniston: He is, after all, used to deflecting questions about his love life: being married to Jennifer Aniston from 2015 until 2017 was good training. He and “Jen” are still close — does he feel protective when gossip magazines track her every break-up, in a way they never do with him? And did he feel proud when she responded to vice-presidential candidate JD Vance and his disparaging comments about Kamala Harris and her cabal of “childless cat ladies”? “She is still very dear to me so of course, yeah, I feel protective. But she batted back criticism, as well she should.”

The creative Theroux family: It’s interesting, he thinks, that “even with the formal education that Louis and Marcel got, they both went into creative fields as well. There’s a creative streak that must run through the DNA.” I wonder if he will pass it on to any children he has? “To be discovered, we’ll see,” he says with a coy smile, posting a piece of nicotine gum in his mouth.

The advice he got from James L. Brooks when he was young: “‘I don’t know if you’re any good as an actor but you will know better and quicker in New York whether you’re good or bad, because the competition is stiffer for plays. Never go to LA until someone flies you there.’ So I stuck to that advice.”

Whether he gets typecast for his good looks: “I’ve said no to a lot of things where I feel they’re usually boring characters, good-looking characters.” But generally, “none of it’s been planned. Comedy is always fun, it’s like eating a bag of sugary snacks — you go to work, you giggle and you are sad to say goodbye. Whereas dramas can be very cathartic. I’d love to come to London to do some theatre but your unions are strict — you have to give British actors roles first.”

[From The Times]

I mean, the issue with Beetlejuice and Lydia is not the “age-gap,” it’s that he’s an ancient ghost who wants to marry a literal child. What Justin has with his fiancee is an age gap, and I hope there’s some discourse about it. Speaking of, it definitely sounds like he put some time and effort into Nicole’s ring. I keep going back to his thing with Aniston and wondering if any of it was real or if it was all just a convenient set-up: the huge quartz-looking ring, the “whoops, the marriage was never legal” reveal, the fact that Justin spent almost all of the marriage in New York and not LA. Oh well. Also: typecast for his good looks, OMG. I’ll admit that Justin is attractive, but “typecast as a beefcake” is a bridge too far.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.