Meryl Streep and Martin Short‘s chemistry caught Only Murders in the Building viewers by surprise, but their offscreen relationship remains strictly platonic.
A rep for Short, 73, denied the actor and Streep, 74, are dating, telling The Messenger in a statement, “They are just very good friends, nothing more.”
Dating rumors ramped up after Short and Streep were spotted sitting next to each other at the 2024 Golden Globes on Sunday, January 7. Short earned his third consecutive nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy for playing Oliver Putnam on the Hulu series, while Streep was nominated in the supporting actress category for her role as Loretta Durkin on season 3. Both left the awards show empty-handed.
The pair were previously linked in December 2023 when Time Out New York theater editor and critic Adam Feldman hinted via social media that there are “two quite surprising celebrity couples” who’ve managed to keep their new romances under wraps, with many replies pointing to Streep and Short.
Streep was married to Don Gummer for 45 years before news broke in October 2023 that they quietly called it quits. “Don Gummer and Meryl Streep have been separated for more than six years, and while they will always care for each other, they have chosen lives apart,” a rep for the actress noted in a statement to Us Weekly.
The former couple tied the knot in 1978 and welcomed four children: Henry, Mamie, Grace and Louisa. Streep and Gummer kept their relationship relatively private, making their last appearance together at the 2018 Academy Awards, where Streep was nominated for her role in The Post.
Streep previously opened up about what made her marriage to Gummer work in a 2002 interview with Vogue. “Goodwill and willingness to bend — and to shut up every once in a while,” she said. “There’s no road map on how to raise a family: It’s always an enormous negotiation. But I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can’t imagine eschewing one for the other.”
Short, for his part, was married to Nancy Dolman from 1980 until she died of ovarian cancer in 2010. The twosome met in 1972 during a run of Godspell, but Dolman stepped back from the entertainment world to focus on the pair’s family. She and Short adopted three children throughout their marriage: Katherine, Oliver and Henry.
Nearly a decade after her death, Short opened up about his late wife’s cancer battle and their relationship. “Our marriage was a triumph. … I still communicate with her all the time,” he told AARP: The Magazine in 2019. “It’s ‘Hey, Nan,’ you know? How would she react to this decision or that, especially regarding our three kids.”
Short noted that he still feels Dolman’s presence, adding, “I believe that when people die, they zoom into the people that love them. The idea that it just ends, and don’t speak of them — that’s wrong … to me, she’s still here.”
