Joshua Jackson was seen holding hands with model Olivia Burgess as they walked through downtown Manhattan on June 7, ending the afternoon with drinks at il Buco in Soho.
Jackson arrived in an all-white linen set; Burgess wore gray Bermuda shorts, a black camisole and leather split-toe mules. The pair moved easily together through summer streets before stopping for beverages at the longtime Soho restaurant.
The brief, public display quickly became the clearest piece of new evidence fueling questions about Jackson’s dating life. The sighting follows a string of public links — Jackson was connected to Simone Ashley in 2025 after a year-long romance with Lupita Nyong’o — and comes as his onscreen reunion with Katie Holmes draws attention ahead of the new film Happy Hours.
Jackson has spoken warmly about Holmes while promoting that project. On March 10 he told Today, “She’s a lifelong friend now,” and added, “And for us to go back and be able to do this again and honestly for her to create that space for us, was kind of magical.” He also said, “She wrote this beautiful love story in three parts. And we got to do that last summer which was so much fun.”
Burgess is a Fordham University graduate from the class of 2015 who has walked runways for fashion houses including Jean Paul Gaultier. The outing with Jackson is the most visible public moment for her since moving between modeling work and the downtown New York scene; the clothes she chose for the afternoon fit the low-key, urban vibe of the neighborhood.
The encounter matters because it layers a very ordinary, date-like gesture onto a headline-generating moment in Jackson’s career. He is a father — his daughter Juno is 6, whom he had with ex-wife Jodie Turner-Smith — and his personal life has been public enough in recent years that even small outings prompt scrutiny. That scrutiny will intensify as Happy Hours reaches audiences; the film is set to debut at Tribeca and has become part of the conversation around Jackson’s private life (see Katie Holmes Reunites With Joshua Jackson in Happy Hours, Debuting at Tribeca —
The most notable friction in this snapshot is not a contradiction in who Jackson spent a Tuesday afternoon with, but in what that gesture implies. He has repeatedly described Holmes as family and “a lifelong friend,” and the two are reviving an on-screen romance that began decades ago. At the same time, a visible hand-holding with Burgess introduces a separate, contemporaneous storyline that neither confirms nor denies anything about his intentions.
That ambiguity is the story’s center: the June 7 sighting is fact; whether it signals a new relationship is not. Jackson’s prior public links — from a year-long relationship with Lupita Nyong’o to a brief connection to Simone Ashley in 2025 — show how quickly fragments of private life can be read as a pattern. For now, the outing is a fresh, date-like tableau and nothing more definitive.
The next consequential moments are predictable. Jackson will be visible again during the Happy Hours rollout — a likely stage for any questions about his personal life to resurface — and he also has a recurring role in Your Friends And Neighbors Season 3 (see Your Friends And Neighbors Season 3 Adds Joshua Jackson in Major Recurring Role — Until Jackson or Burgess offers a statement, the hand-holding remains the strongest public evidence of a connection and the clearest unanswered item: intimacy observed, relationship status unconfirmed, and the film festivals and television premieres ahead the most probable places for clarification.
