The former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and the pop star Katy Perry are now publicly a couple: They acknowledged it, naturally enough, by way of Instagram.
Given that many Canadians, myself included, decided in 2025 that they were collectively tired of Mr. Trudeau, the prospect of the divorced world leader surfacing in such a classically Trudeau-ian manner could be cringe-worthy. For those outside Canada, it might even be jarring that a sidelined world leader is openly cavorting with a woman whose most notorious lyric is “I kissed a girl and I liked it / The taste of her cherry ChapStick.” I’d argue, though, that it’s warmly reassuring: In a world of so much change and turmoil, it’s nice to know that some things will reliably play out exactly as you expected.
As a public figure, Mr. Trudeau has always been a master of celebrity, so it’s fitting he’s now openly embracing its benefits. Mr. Trudeau is himself the child of celebrities: His father was the notoriously dashing prime minister Pierre Trudeau, and his mother, Margaret, was enough of a jet-setter to be profiled in Vanity Fair. Like Bennifer, Kimye, Tomkat and Brangelina before them, the coupling of Prudeau (Truderry?) can be seen as an inevitable, even organic, phenomenon.
In his decade as prime minister, Mr. Trudeau not only wielded celebrity as a potent political tool but also used it responsibly, even admirably. On nearly star power alone, he took the Liberals from the third-most popular party in the country to a majority government. Just as important, he always seemed to understand his role and play it perfectly: He was there to be a famous face, and he largely left policy decisions to people who had a stronger grasp on the details, such as his deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland and his aide Gerald Butts. His gift — and it is undeniably a gift — was that he clearly knew that there were smarter people in the room, and he listened to them.
Consider the contrast: Many of America’s political institutions are in the hands of minor celebrities and the celebrity-adjacent, from the White House on down. An early Republican attack line against Barack Obama in 2008 was that he was just a face, a political celebrity — yet now you have Dr. Mehmet Oz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known more for fame than expertise, at the helm of genuinely important institutions. Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, often acts like a character in a 1980s action movie, giving speeches about taking the gloves off. Dan Bongino supported conspiracy theories as a well-known podcaster but has had to change tack since becoming deputy director of the F.B.I., a job he will be leaving next month. “I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions. That’s clear, and one day I’ll be back in that space,” he told Sean Hannity recently on Fox News. “But that’s not what I’m paid for now.” It’s a pretty frank dissection of the way the American celebrity-political complex continues to create thorny contradictions.
So if Mr. Trudeau is a politician acting like a celebrity, at least he comes by it honestly and pulls it off artfully. The Perry affair doesn’t seem so notable to Canadians because we understand his lineage: Pierre Trudeau dated a 24-year-old Kim Cattrall when he was in his 60s, and Margaret Trudeau was rumored to have had a series of celebrity flings, including, by various accounts, with the Rolling Stones’s Ronnie Wood, Ted Kennedy and Jack Nicholson, a kind of trifecta of boomer ideals of masculinity.
Of course, Mr. Trudeau’s showmanship didn’t entirely evade embarrassments, as when in 2018 he appeared, during a state visit to India, in a sherwani with gold thread that might have been a bit over-the-top in a Bollywood musical. The next year, when old pictures of him in blackface surfaced on the internet, his defense was accurate, if not persuasive: “The fact of the matter is that I’ve always — and you’ll know this — been more enthusiastic about costumes than is sometimes appropriate.”
But he’s always showcased a strong sense of self-awareness about the demands and absurdities of public life, navigating the headwinds of fame to a lasting and effective political career. America’s Democrats, are you listening? You can make plans for an abundance agenda and still have it delivered by a celebrity spokesperson. There’s a chance an Oprah Winfrey candidacy with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson as running mate would crush any Republican opponent. Mr. Trudeau understood this, as does, in his way, President Trump: In an attention economy, the world belongs to the celebrity class. The trick is to find a celebrity who will inhabit the spotlight but leave the governance to the experts.
Don’t worry about Mr. Trudeau’s ex-wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, who’s navigating her own version of post-political celebrity: Just this month she was revealed to be the voice behind the mask in the French Canadian version of “The Masked Singer.” It’s certainly not hard to imagine one of the couple’s three children as prime minister one day — at least not any harder than it once was to imagine young Justin in the same role. Celebrity begets celebrity. The rest of us are just watchers, and sometimes voters.
Stephen Marche is the author, most recently, of “The Next Civil War: Dispatches From the American Future.”
Source photographs by Taylor Hill, Dave Chan, Chesnot, Simon Ackerman, Chris Condon, Sam Tabone, Neil Mockford, Monica Schipper, Alex Wong, WPA Pool and David Boily/Getty Images
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