The couple flew under the radar for several years after first getting together in 2016, but throughout the 2022 awards season, fans have been getting a closer look at their adorable relationship as both Dunst and Plemons have opened up about their love of working together—especially now that it’s culminated in this very special moment for the co-Oscar nominees. What’s it like sharing the screen with your significant other, and then both getting your first Oscar nods together? Here’s what we know about Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons.
Is Kirsten Dunst married to Jesse Plemons?
Nope; despite Plemons being referred to as Dunst’s “husband” at her Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony in 2019 and in a 2021 NewYorkTimes interview, they haven’t officially tied the knot. But six months after gossip column PageSix first reported their engagement in January 2017, Dunst officially confirmed on The Tonight Show in June 2017 that Plemons was her fiancé. “I was a little sick when he did it which was funny, but ‘in sickness and in health,’ so that worked, right? I was in sweats,” she laughed about the proposal. She also revealed Plemons had talked to her dad the previous Christmas. “I could tell on my dad’s face at Christmas, he’s a bad liar,” she said. “I was like, ‘Did you talk to Jesse?’ and he was like, ‘No, what are you talking about?’” After their engagement was announced, Dunst said the couple had started working on wedding preparations. “It’s good. It’s so funny, I never thought I would be that person who had a Pinterest board,” Dunst said on Live with Kelly and Ryan in September 2017. “And because we created it together from the beginning, it’s a really nice thing to do together. It’s going to be so personal and fun. We are having a really good time.” She also revealed that the clothing line Rodarte would be designing her wedding dress. So why haven’t they gotten hitched yet, nearly five years later? “It’s a priority, but you know how life is. You’ve got other little things. So it has to be a good time when we can all have fun,” she told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour in August 2019. “We’re definitely going to have a wedding eventually, but probably [a] small [ceremony] at home or something, like, really intimate, not a big wedding.” Life—and a pandemic—continued to get in the way of the actual ceremony, but for all intents and purposes, they consider themselves married. “We call each other husband and wife,” Dunst recently told the LosAngelesTimes. “But we have to get married at this point. It’s ridiculous. We just haven’t planned a wedding. There was COVID, then we had another child. I didn’t want to be pregnant, get married, have a party and not be able to have fun with everybody.”
How did Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons meet?
Dunst and Plemons first met when they played husband and wife in the second season of the FX series Fargo in 2015. They first saw each other at the airport on the way to filming in Calgary, Canada—and they had an instant connection. “I met Jesse at the airport at LAX. And I walked up to him, and he was carrying a carton of cigarettes. And I was like, ‘Oh, no, you smoke the cigarettes that I used to smoke, and I quit,’” Dunst recently told NPR (they’ve since both quit). “I remember seeing his eyes, and our eyes meeting, and I still remember to this day—and it’s happened to me very occasionally in life where I really have that moment of remembering our eye connection of meeting for the first time.” Plemons remembers the first moment they locked eyes as well. “I don’t often remember every detail about meeting someone, but I was standing in line at LAX,” he said at Dunst’s Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony in 2019. “And out of nowhere from behind I hear a voice call my name, and I turn to see Kirsten, and immediately without too many words being exchanged I looked into her eyes and saw the beautiful, sweet, unguarded, welcoming human being that she is and it was truly in an instant, and immediately my nerves and anxiety [about filming the show with her] dissolved and I knew everything was going to be alright.” How sweet! After they got off the plane, Dunst remembers letting him cut in line with her to get their workers’ permits. “I was like, ‘Come cut with me.’ And that was the beginning,” she said.
Is Fargo where Kirsten Dunst fell in love with husband Jesse Plemons?
Sort of—creatively, at least. Although Dunst was in another relationship at the time with actor Garrett Hedlund, she and Plemons had an immediate bond through their work. Dunst told Extra they were “creative soulmates” first. Dunst also admitted to NPR, “We fell in love creatively first, I think, in Fargo. We just immediately clicked in the way we approach things and don’t judge each other… there’s no competition. There’s no ego. There’s a sharing of ideas. And we were very present with each other.” She says they’d rehearse almost every night, running lines together because of the show’s tricky, fast-paced dialogue. “And we really enjoyed it and inspired each other,” she says. “So I think the first step in our relationship was falling in love creatively.” Plemons echoes her thoughts about their beginnings as well. “I knew that she would be in my life for a long time,” he told TheNewYorkTimes in 2020. But it wasn’t until nearly a year and half after filming Fargo in early 2015 that Dunst and Plemons were first caught by paparazzi cameras smooching—in late May 2016, just a couple of months after her reported split from Hedlund. “We got together a year afterwards,” Dunst said on The Tonight Show in June 2017. “We became really good friends first.”
Does Kirsten Dunst have kids with Jesse Plemons?
Yes, the couple has two sons: Ennis, who was born in 2018, and James Robert, born in 2021. Just like any other family, they have to balance their work life with the demands of parenting. And for Dunst, the juxtaposition of Hollywood life and motherhood sometimes takes her by surprise. “You go from, ‘Woo, glamour, I’m getting my hair and makeup done,’ to ‘I haven’t brushed my teeth yet,’” she said in her recent New York Times interview. After coming home from a film festival, “When I stepped in the front door, I was like, ‘This never happened.’ That’s how it felt: ‘I’m home again, and back to the reality of vomit on my shirt.’” Plemons spoke about going from one child to two to British GQ. “It’s so, so… wild, and wonderful to see our eldest son with him. It’s hard to put into words, other than just like very, very cheesy words,” he said. “But it’s so beautiful, and he’s been so understanding, with us dividing our attention. He had a few little slip-ups, but that’s to be expected, you know? And yeah, our little guy—or little, very big guy.” (James was 18 pounds at four months!) Dunst announced both pregnancies with gorgeous photo shoots: Her first in a Rodarte fashion campaign, and the second in W Magazine, also dressed by Rodarte. “Every shot was on the floor. I was like, ‘I can’t get up.’ I felt like Urkel,” Dunst joked in her W interview.
Was Jesse Plemons a child actor like Kirsten Dunst?
Yes! Dunst started as a child model, with her breakout film role at the age of 11 in 1994’s Interview with the Vampire. Plemons started as a child in a Coca-Cola commercial, and had small roles and guest spots until his breakout performance in the TV series Friday Night Lights in 2006 at age 18. “We laugh about the fact that we were two child actors,” Dunst told TheNewYorkTimes, “and we both made it out OK.” She also told NPR that having that shared background with Plemons “probably bonds us deeper in some ways as well.” Funnily, she jokes that both her and Plemons’ mothers want to get the couple’s children into acting too! “They must be very proud of themselves. We joke that they should start their own children’s agency,” she told NPR. “They’re dying to take our son out sneakily to audition—just because they have that in them. It’s really funny.” The next generation of Dunst-Plemons talent? We’ll be looking forward to it!
Did Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons star in a movie together?
Another thing getting in the way of tying the knot? Starring in the 2021 Academy-Award nominated movie from director Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog, a Western set in 1925 Montana with Benedict Cumberbatch. The couple loved getting the chance to work together for a second time, again playing husband and wife after doing the same in Fargo. “Jesse and I were lucky we were doing a movie together,” she told The New York Times. “We had each other through this whole thing, to laugh with, to bitch with.” In another New York Times article, she talked about her respect for Plemons as an actor. “He works so hard at what he does,” Dunst said. “He takes everything very seriously and embeds himself very deeply.” Plemons has also praised his partner’s devotion to her craft. “I don’t want to do another project without her. It’s just the best," he told PEOPLE. “I’m constantly amazed by what she brings. She just operates from such a deep place in her soul.” He gushed even more about working with her to British GQ. “There’s a ferocity that she can tap into—and a sort of wild, very expressive and real…rage is the wrong word, but everything that’s happening inside you, you just see on her face and in her eyes,” he said. “When someone is expressing so much, it makes your job a lot easier because all you have to do is look, and listen, and respond. I think she’s just an incredibly honest, bold performer and can kind of do anything. You know she’s really funny, and really versatile.” Dunst has said she and Plemons have plans to work together again. “We actually talked to [Power of the Dog producer] Tanya Seghatchian about what Jesse and I should do next,” she told TheHollywoodReporter. “We have some ideas, and Jesse and I definitely want do another project. He’s my favorite actor to work with.”
Are Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons both nominated for Oscars in 2022?
Yes! She received a nod for Best Supporting Actress for The Power of the Dog; he did for Best Supporting Actor. “For both Jesse and I to get our first nominations together is beyond our wildest dreams,” Dunst said in a statement reacting to her nomination. The pair were both previously nominated together for Emmy Awards for Fargo in 2016. Dunst revealed what happened when she told Plemons he was nominated, in a phone call to the actor on location for an upcoming HBO Max limited series, Love and Death. “‘You were nominated!’” she told him, as she related to the Los Angeles Times. His response? “‘OK, I’ve got to go to rehearsal.’ I think he was shellshocked!” The film received 12 nominations in all, including all four main actors (Dunst, Plemons, Cumberbatch and co-star Kodi Smit-McPhee) and director Campion. “It’s so nice that all of us got it together for the same film,” Dunst told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It’s so special.” Next, Jennifer Lawrence Is Pregnant! Get to Know the Oscar Winner’s Marriage to Husband Cooke Maroney
