Hollywood fans got a playful jolt this week when an engagement notice featuring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya appeared in The Boston Globe, suggesting the two stars were tying the knot. At first glance, the announcement seemed like a genuine bombshell, but the details quickly gave it away.
The names listed, Emma Harwood and Charlie Thompson, belonged to the A-listers' characters in the upcoming A24 film The Drama, which the advert cleverly teased. The Globe ran the notice in its Living/Arts section, pausing its usual TV Critic’s Corner column to make room for the stunt.
The ad mirrored the film’s official poster and shared the headline, “Emma Harwood and Charlie Thompson Engaged,” before being circulated widely on social media by Zendaya and A24. According to IMDb, The Drama follows a happily engaged pair whose wedding week is thrown into chaos by an unexpected turn of events.
The fictitious backstory in the Globe notice added charmingly specific details. Zendaya’s Emma Harwood, daughter of Baton Rouge’s Mr. and Mrs. Roger Harwood, is listed as a 2013 Portside High School graduate and a 2017 Boston University English alum working at a bookstore called Mission Books. Pattinson’s Charlie Thompson, meanwhile, is described as the Cambridge Art Museum director and a supposed Tufts University PhD graduate, though the Globe later clarified the school only offers an MA in Art History.
The Globe agreed to host the playful engagement announcement as the film is set and shot in Boston. The notice even included a faux wedding date, 3 April 2026, which aligns with the film’s release.
Pattinson has previously shared how working with Zendaya can get intense. Speaking to French magazine Premiere, he recalled, “We had a scene together that was driving me crazy… I ended up calling Zendaya the night before shooting, shared my doubts for two hours, and she calmly made me understand the line just said what it meant.”
The pair aren’t slowing down in 2026. Alongside The Drama, they’re co-starring in the third installment of Dune and Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, cementing what many are calling Hollywood’s most intriguing on-screen duo.