These are photos of Renee Zellweger at the German premiere of Bridget Jones’ Baby on Wednesday. She’s wearing a bizarre black Monse one-arm dress with a high leg slit, ruching on the side which leads to a giant bow, a folded flap at the neckline, and even more unnecessary details like a bubble arm with a cutout across the top. It’s like a bad 80s prom dress made in home ec class.

Renee has a new interview with The Advocate and I’m struck by how much she sounds like Ashley Judd here. In fact she’s been sounding like Ashley Judd for a while in that she uses a lot of big words but doesn’t say much. Everyone is focusing on her comments about whether Kenny Chesney was gay. She said that the story is made up and it makes her sad, but there’s a lot of word salad to get through.

Do you have a similar gay confidant?
I’m lucky to have handfuls. The majority of my closest friends are gay, and I have my pearl. I went to Miami for New Year’s Eve some years back with him and his boyfriend, and we got paparazzied on the beach. We had a very Bridget Jones moment: He had no desire to be photographed in his trunks, so he told me, “You need to get out of here and go for a run right now!” Some tabloid ran the photos and wrote, “Has Renée finally found her pearl?” I was like, “Aww, he’s my pearl!” He’s family to me. We dated for a minute, actually.

After citing “fraud” as the reason for annulling your marriage to Kenny Chesney in 2005, many media outlets alleged that he must be gay.
I forgot about that. It’s a pretty big thing to forget, isn’t it? That made me sad. It made me sad that somehow people were using that as a way to be cruel and calling someone gay as a pejorative, which has fateful consequences. Of course, there’s the bigger-picture problem of why anyone had to make up a story at all.

Were you tempted to publicly jump to his defense?
Well, I’d said all I needed to say on that subject. I’m an old-fashioned gal who doesn’t feel it’s appropriate to hang out your laundry on the lawn. I feel you devalue yourself as a human being when you share very personal things with a bajillion strangers who are making fun of you. I just don’t see that there’s any dignity in that. But sometimes it is difficult to just let something be what it is, especially when it’s unnecessary ugliness. Once you’ve said your piece, shouldn’t that be enough? And why is the ugliness that’s perpetuated in the media so attractive to people?

In Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason’s lesbian twist, Bridget got a surprise snog from a female admirer. Has a woman ever expressed her love for you?
Yes, thank goodness. But I loved her differently. We talked about it, we laughed, and I was happy she trusted me and that we have a relationship where we could have that conversation.

[From The Advocate]

I actually remember those photos Renee mentions where she was running at the beach after being spotted with a male friend because she had a portable CD player with her. Although it was many years ago (it was before smart phones) hardly anyone was still using portable CD players back then. I think I found those, that was in 2006 and people were speculating about Renee’s love life because she had recently split with Kenny Chesney. She eventually went on to date Bradley Cooper, and we know how that turned out. She seems happy now in her relationship of over three years with Doyle Bramhall II.

As for whether checking “fraud” on her divorce papers meant that Kenny Chesney was gay, Kenny has explained that it was a legal decision in order to obtain an annulment. He insists he has a “long line of girls who could testify that I am not gay.” Kenny went on to clarify that he’s slept with well over a hundred women. Renee’s comments here remind me so much of her other recent interviews in that it’s hard to tell what she’s saying other than the fact that the media notices and speculates about her life and she dislikes that. She has an issue with not speaking plainly. I did really like what she said about a female friend who expressed a romantic interest in her. That was sweet.

Photos credit: WENN and FameFlynet