It’s well-known Courteney Cox is in a relationship with Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid and that the two met through Ed Sheeran, as Sheeran is both Cox’s friend and a regular collaborator with McDaid. Now, Cox has told the full story of how she and McDaid came to be an item, and it turns out in involves a ton more famous people.
Guesting on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show this morning (as Billboard notes), Cox recounted the tale, which began with Sheeran staying over at her place (as he regularly does) and wanting to have some guests over. Cox began, “Ed said, ‘Can I have some friends over this week?’ and I said, ‘Of course.’ He invited Johnny, Gary Lightbody, both of them from Snow Patrol, Taylor Swift… some great musicians and they all came over and I had a fun group anyway: Sacha Baron Cohen, Isla Fisher, Jennifer [Aniston] was there, it was just one of these fun weekends.”
She noted some guests stayed the night at her place and the next morning, Cox was disappointed when people were trading phone numbers but not with her. She said, “This is worse than not getting nominated [for an Emmy for Friends]… and I remember seeing Johnny and going, ‘Oh wow, he’s really intense.’ He’s got those eyes and he was playing the piano and I thought, ‘He’s really, really handsome.’”
That part of the story ends there, but in 2013, Cox had a screening of a movie she directed. There, she heard Fisher tell Cox’s Cougar Town co-star Christa Miller she should flirt with McDaid. Cox continued, “And I went, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa. Isla, what are you doing? If anybody’s gonna try to flirt with Johnny, what’s wrong with me?’”
So, Fisher went up to Sasha Baron Cohen (her husband) to tell him about Cox’s interest in McDaid. Then, Cohen approached McDaid and Lightbody and said, “Hey, Courteney wants to f*ck one of you from Snow Patrol and it’s not you, Gary.” On top of that, Harry Styles overheard the conversation and put pressure on McDaid. Cox noted of Styles, “‘If you don’t ask her out’… I think he threatened to do something crazy like… I don’t remember but it was pretty bad.”
Sure enough, McDaid called Cox the next day, they went on a date a week later, and they’re still together to this day.
Meanwhile, Cox was on Jimmy Kimmel Live! a couple days ago, where she gave her side of the story about Sheeran repeatedly buying her gimp masks, so check that out below.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.