Joe Alwyn, born 21 February 1991, is an English actor and songwriter. He has starred in films such as Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, The Favourite, and Mary Queen of Scots.
Originally working under the pseudonym of William Bowery, he was initially credited on six songs from the eighth album of his former partner —American singer Taylor Swift— folklore. Since the release of folklore, speculation surrounding William Bowery’s identity surfaced, until Swift herself confirmed the person behind the pseudonym was Alwyn during her concert film folklore: the long pond sessions. In December of 2020, Alwyn was credited as a co-writer on three songs off of Swift’s ninth album, evermore.
Alwyn talked about the decision of using a pseudonym to release songs with Swift on a May 2022 interview with The Kelly Clarkson Show, stating:
We chose to do it so people first and foremost would listen to the music first, before dissecting the fact that we did it together. We did it under the name William Bowery, which sounds very fancy, like an Agatha Christie character who should be wearing a monocle with a big mustache, but it was a combination of William, who’s my great-grandfather, who I never actually met and was a composer, he wrote a lot of classical music and a lot of film scores, and then Bowery, which is an area in New York that I spent a lot of time in when I first went over there.
