The backstage moment viewers didn’t see. Bella Hadid and The Weeknd reunited at the VMAs 2020, and it was only semi-awkward. The 37th annual MTV Video Music Awards were held on Sunday, August 30, in New York City. According to a source for The Daily Mail, Hadid, who was a presenter at the VMAs, and The Weeknd, who performed and won two awards on Sunday night, ran into each other at a rehearsal for the awards show on Friday, August 28.
The Daily Mail reported that the supermodel and the “Starboy” singer looked like they were on “good terms” as they crossed paths backstage after The Weeknd finished a rehearsal for his performance of “Blinding Lights.” “They played it cool and crossed paths with each other, same place, same time,’ an insider revealed, adding that the pair still appear to be ‘on good terms,” the source said.
Along with his performance of “Blinding Lights,” The Weeknd won two awards—Video of the Year and Best R&B—at the VMAs for the song, which was from his March album, After Hours, which fans believe to be inspired by his relationships with Hadid and Selena Gomez.
Hadid and The Weeknd started dating in 2015. They broke up in November 2016, almost a year after Hadid starred in the music video for The Weeknd’s 2015 song “In the Night” and the two made their red carpet debut at the 2016 Grammys. A couple months after his breakup from Hadid, The Weeknd started dating Gomez. The two split in October 2017, and The Weeknd and Hadid reunited in May 2018 before their final breakup in 2019.
A source told HollywoodLife in August 2020 that Hadid and The Weeknd still remain friends, despite their breakup a year ago. “They’ll always have some sort of connection but things just didn’t work out and it was bad timing,” the insider said. “They’re both still young so who knows what the future holds and they’ve always remained on good terms, but they’re just on different pages at this point.”
The source continued, “Bella knows that Abel’s passion has always been his music and his form of expressing himself, but at the same time, she also appreciates that he’s never discussed their past or their relationship in interviews and she’s always had the same respect for him. Abel was always like part of Bella’s family when they were dating. He would play his songs for her mom, Yolanda, her sister Gigi and brother Anwar before dropping them to get their opinions and Bella used to think it was hilarious at Yolanda’s reaction because sometimes they were too over the top for her taste. But that just shows how comfortable he was with her family.”
The Weeknd released After Hours in March 2020. Though several songs on the album have been speculated to be about Hadid, fans note that the title track, released as a single in February 2020, is most likely to be about the model because of these lyrics that speak to the couple’s on-again, off-again relationship: “Cause my heart belongs to you I’ll risk it all for you I won’t just leave / This time, I’ll never leave I wanna share babies / Protection, we won’t need.”