Matt Healy’s mom Denise Welch appeared on Watch What Happens Live last week. I haven’t seen Taylor Swift’s fans this upset in a while! When Andy Cohen asked Denise about Healy’s relationship with Taylor Swift and Swift’s subsequent album full of songs about Healy (The Tortured Poets Department), Denise said: “Obviously on pain of death can I talk about that episode, but not being her mother-in-law is a role that I’m glad that I lost…Not that I have anything against her at all. It was just — it was tricky.” I defended Denise, and I still do – she has a right to her opinion, and she’s happy she doesn’t have to deal with Taylor as a daughter-in-law. Which sounds reasonable to me. But I guess we need even more of the Healy-Welch perspective, via Us Weekly:
Matt Healy’s mom, Denise Welch, has a hard time biting her tongue when it comes to discussing her son’s romance with Taylor Swift.
“Denise is still Matty’s mum at the end of the day, and it was bloody hard for her to stay quiet during the whole ordeal,” a source exclusively tells Us Weekly. “Now that time has gone by, she’s saying what she can because she knows that her son got hurt.”
Welch, 67, didn’t seem to hold back as she spoke about Swift, 35, and her Tortured Poets Department album, which is believed to have been inspired by the pop star’s 2023 romance with Healy, 36, on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen on Thursday, July 24.
“Obviously on pain of death can I talk about that episode, but not being her mother-in-law is a role that I’m glad that I lost,” she said, earning gasps from the audience. However, Welch quickly added, “Not that I have anything against her at all. It was just — it was tricky.” The British TV personality hinted that she thought it was unfair that Swift could share her side of the story via her music, but others who tried to speak out seemingly faced backlash from fans.
“Listen, you’re not allowed to say anything, and then she writes a whole album, you know, about it,” she continued. Welch concluded that her son has “taken it all in completely good grace” and that they’ve “moved on. He’s very happy with his amazing fiancée, Gabriella, Gabbriette [Bechtel], who is gorgeous.”
Us’s source says of Welch’s WWHL interview, “You can’t blame a mum for standing up for her child,” adding that the time after Healy and Swift’s split was “terrible” for the Coronation Street star.
“Any mum can imagine what it would feel like — but then you have to multiply it by a million because of how famous [Taylor] is. I wish I could say she’s used to it, but she’s not,” the insider continues. “It’s a horrible thing to have the most famous person in the world saying that your son broke her heart when it was the other way around, and then you can’t even defend yourself.”
The source concludes, “She’s saying the mother-in-law stuff because that’s where Matty thought it was headed. She’s entitled to her opinion.”
My opinion is that if Taylor was still talking about Healy and their relationship and split in TTTD, then it is fair game for Healy and Welch to answer questions and tell their side of the story. They have the right to talk, so I don’t want to hear anything about “Healy and his mom are obsessed” or “Denise has no right to say anything after all this time!” Now, do I think that Taylor was “the heartbreaker” in this particular situation, and that Healy was the heartbroken one? No. I don’t. I think Healy was an immature, racist, game-playing sh-thead. I also believe that if Taylor was the one to break it off, she did so because her family and her team convinced her that Healy was doing serious damage to her reputation (which is also true).
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, WWHL screengrab.
