Famous Age-Gap Romance: The Bachelor Nick Viall (38) and Natalie Joy (20)

Natalie Joy and Nick Viall

Nick Viall is a reality TV star and podcaster who began his career by appearing on two consecutive seasons of The Bachelorette (2014-2015) before he was The Bachelor (2016). In 2020, Natalie Joy, a then-20-year-old brunette, initiated an age-gap relationship with then-38-year-old Viall by sending him an Instagram DM.

However, Natalie’s love was unrequited. On Taylor Lautner and Tay Dome's podcast The Squeeze (2023), Vaill shared that he (initially) rejected Natalie’s advances “many times” and, in an attempt to verify Natalie’s age, he even “carded her”.

Nick, “When she, like, first said she had feelings for me. [She] said she wanted to be in a relationship, and I turned her down.”

Tay, “Did you really?”

Nick, “Oh, yeah.”

Natalie, “Oh my God. So many times.”

Nick, “I carded her.”

Natalie, “He was like, I wanna see your ID.”

However, despite their 18-year age-gap, Natalie would not take no for a final answer.

Natalie, “I was like, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life with this man. And I knew it, and he didn't. So I was like, I'm just gonna hang on, because, I know, he'll come around.”

Natalie’s persistence paid off, because Nick proposed to her in January of 2023, and they wed in April of 2024. Consequently, she received some DMs from (some of) her followers whom called her a “child bride”. (Interestingly, the age-gap wedding was profiled in the New York Times’ “Style” section.)

On the “What’s the Snark on Nick Viall?” episode of the Snark Bait podcast (September 25, 2024), co-hosts Sophie Ross and Christy, maligned Nick for being in an age-gap relationship with Natalie. Sophie implied that Natalie was a child. Christy implied that Natalie didn’t have any self-confidence and that Natalie lacked “frontal lobe development”, which meant that Natalie lacked the ability to “actually see” Nick for who he was. And despite the fact that Natalie initiated the relationship, which Nick initially rebuffed repeatedly, "So many times," Sophie and Christy, more than once, accused Nick of “predatory behavior”.

Sophie, “I think about myself at that age, like, and I was a child. It makes me upset. Like, it actually makes me upset. [...] It’s the same when, like, when Leonardo DiCaprio or [...] Tobey Maguire. Like is with a 20-year-old woman. Like, it makes me upset. Because I think about myself at that age. And, like, I was a child.”

Christy, “You just want someone that you can manipulate. That is not stupid [sic] enough to stand up for herself. That doesn’t have the self-confidence or, like, that frontal lobe development to where she can actually see you for who you are. It’s actually scary. It’s predatory behavior.”

Natalie Joy and Nick Viall

However, Sophie appeared to change her stance when she implied that Natalie did have her “own free will”, but that Natalie set herself up to be easily manipulated by Nick. 

Sophie, “It’s such a huge red flag [...] And I’m not saying that, you know, oh my God, this isn't, like, a person that has their own free will. Like, they have their own free will. I just think that it’s clear that when someone who’s significantly older chooses to date someone [...] this younger person choosing to date them as well. They’re just so much easier to manipulate [...]”

Based on statements that Sophie and Christy made on the “What’s the Snark on Shannon Ford (and Lames)” podcast (October 3, 2024), one can safely say that they’re pro sex work. This raises the (rhetorical) question: If Natalie had an OnlyFans account, like a number of teens and women in their twenties (e.g., Sami Sheen), would Sophie and Christy (openly) say that Natalie should not be allowed to have an OnlyFans, because she’s a child and that she didn’t know what she was doing because her frontal lobe wasn’t developed. 

Netflix's & Holly Jackson’s A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER: Teen Andie Has Sex with Janitor and Teacher!

IMDb’s Storyline:

Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day.

In Netflix’s A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (2024), Andie was involved in two age-gap relationships -  with Dan Da Silva, a “handsome” police officer, and with The Secret Older Guy, Mr. Elliot Ward, the Head of English at Fairview High. (Note that Pip, a teen investigating Andie’s murder for a school project, referred to Officer Da Silva as “handsome” in s01e01.)

Pip Discovers that Mr. Ward is Andie's Secret Older Guy

In s01e05, Officer Da Silva informed Pip that he and Andie “had a thing”. Pip was able to deduce that the thing between Officer Da Silva and Andie occurred when Andie was illegally 15. However, Officer Da Silva implied that Andie claimed that she was 16 when they had sex. (Note that 16 is the age-of-consent in the United Kingdom where the Netflix series was set.)

Officer Da Silva, “Andie and I had a thing, but it was two years before she went missing.” 

Pip, “How old was she? That’s statutory rape. She was 15!”

Officer Da Silva, “Yeah. Not a good look if you want to become a police officer. I could tell you she lied about her age, said she was 16, but I’m not sure you’d believe me, would you? 

Later in the same episode, Mr. Ward shared with Pip that when Andie was 17, he and Andie “grew close and started a relationship”, but they only had age-gap sex three times before Andie started dating Sal - her teen boyfriend with whom she did not have sex. 

Mr. Ward, “[...] her grades had started slipping. She came to me for help - just tutoring. This was not long after [my wife] Isabel had died and I was in a dark place. Andie and I grew close and started a relationship.”

Andie's Ivy House Hotel Selfie

Unsurprisingly, it was Andie’s idea to have Mr. Ward take her to the “posh’ Ivy House Hotel where they checked into the hotel under Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. To commemorate the occasion, before sex with her teacher for the first time, Andie took a selfie in a pink lingerie set in the hotel’s bathroom. 

They went to the Ivy House three times before Andie ended the age-gap relationship and started dating Sal  - a teen classmate. 

Mr. Ward, “It only happened a few times, and then she started seeing Sal. We limped on for a bit, but then she called it off. She said she was in love with him.”

However, after Andie started dating Sal, she asked Mr. Ward to see her again at the Ivy House, but that time it wasn’t for sex. It was for money.

Pip, “You were at the Ivy House Hotel with her just days before she went missing.”

Mr. Ward, “You’re right, I was. She said she wanted to see me. At first, I thought she’d had a change of heart, but she wanted money.”

Pip, “Why?”

Mr. Ward didn’t know why Andie needed the money, and he didn’t give her the £5,000 that she requested. Consequently, a few days later at Mr. Ward’s house, Andie threatened to (falsely) accuse Mr. Ward of having a non-consual age-gap relationship with her, but Mr. Ward refused to be blackmailed. 

Mr. Ward, “I don’t know, but I said, ‘No.’ Then she left, but a few days later, she came to my house. She told me if I didn’t give her £5,000, she would tell the world that I’d taken advantage of her. Again, I said, ’No, I wouldn’t be blackmailed.’ 

Consequently, Andie, “[...] went wild, screaming and slapping [Mr. Ward]”. In an effort to defend himself, he pushed Andie who, “Hit her head on the countertop. It was bad. There was blood everywhere.” But after Mr. Ward went to get his phone to call an ambulance, Andie was gone - never to be seen by him again. 

Naturally, Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder novel, a #1 New York Times Bestseller, provided more details about Andie. For example, we learned from the novel that 17-year-old Andrea “Andie” Bell was described as “[...] white, five feet six inches tall, with long blond hair and [“sparking pale”] blue eyes” and “plump pale lips” - the  “[...] prettiest, most popular girl in the grade”.

Mr. Elliot Ward was described as the Fairview High history teacher and former Yale professor with “wisps of gray hair in his brown hair and [...] thick-rimmed glasses.” Mr. Ward taught Andie AP US History during her sophomore year, but per Mr. Ward, Andie initiated their student-teacher affair when she started “paying attention” to him at school during her senior year. For example, Andie followed Mr. Ward in the halls where she asked about his day, and she even asked for his phone number.

“It was late February. Andie started . . . paying attention to me at school. I wasn’t teaching her; she didn’t take his history. But she’d follow me in the halls and ask me about my day. And, I don’t know, I guess the attention felt . . . nice. [...] And then Andie starts asking to have my phone number. Nothing had happened at this point, we hadn’t kissed or anything, but she kept asking.”

Not being able to resist the allure of a nymphet, Mr. Ward (somewhat) reluctantly gave Andie his phone number. Subsequently, Andie suggested that they, “[...] meet somewhere outside of school. Like a hotel” where they had sex for the first time. 

“I told her absolutely not. But in a moment of madness, a moment of weakness, I found myself booking one. She could be very persuasive. [...] And I booked the [The Ivy House] hotel for the next week [...] That’s when it happened the first time.’ His voice was quiet with shame. ‘We didn’t stay the night; [...] We stayed just a couple of hours.”

Mr. Ward tried to end the age-gap affair, but Andie blackmailed him into returning to The Ivy House for sex by planting her nude selfie in his classroom, which Max, to his delight, discovered in the back of the classroom.

“I said it couldn’t happen again and tried to call it off. Andie wouldn’t let me. She started threatening to turn me in. She interrupted one of my lessons, came over and whispered to me that she’d left a naked picture of herself hidden in the classroom somewhere and that I should find it before someone else did. Trying to scare me. So, I went back to the Ivy House the next week, because I didn’t know what she’d do if I didn’t. I thought she would tire of whatever this was soon enough.”

Subsequently, Mr. Ward tried to end the affair again, but that only caused an “irate” Andie to go to Mr. Ward’s home where she screamed, she said that she “only touched” him because she wanted him to help her get into Yale, and she destroyed his deceased wife’s paintings. 

There are some notable differences between the Netflix series and the novel:

Andie’s selfie that Pip found in Max’s bedroom and that Max found in Mr. Ward’s classroom was different in the book than in the series. In the series' selfie, Andie was wearing a pink bra and pantie set, but in the book, the schoolgirl was nude except for a pair of black underwear. Jackson wrote:

A photo she’d taken of herself in a mirror. Standing on a red and white tiled floor, her right hand raised and clutched round the phone. Her mouth was pushed out in a pout and her eyes looked straight out of the page; she was wearing nothing but a pair of black underwear.

(Note: In the ebook that I referenced, which was published by Electric Monkey - an imprint of Egmont UK (2019), instead of black underwear, topless teen Andie wore black pants.)

In the series and the novel, 15-year-old Andie had sex with Daniel “Dan” Da Silva. In the series, Daniel implied that Andie lied about her age. In the novel, it was clarified that they had sex while Dan was Fairview High’s janitor. 

In the series, Nat Da Silva’s nudes were leaked “all over the school”. Consequently, Nat was nicknamed “‘Nude-gate’ Nat.” In the novel, we learned that Nat was a freshman at the time (i.e., ≈14-years-old) and that Andie was the leaker`of Nat’s topless video. 

In the series, after Mr. Ward and Andie ended their student-teacher affair, Andie attempted to blackmail Mr. Ward by demanding £5,000 or she would “tell the world” that he took advantage of her, but after Mr. Ward refused, Andie “[...] went wild, screaming and slapping [Mr. Ward]”. In the novel, Andie blackmailed Mr. Ward into returning to The Ivy House for sex by planting a nude selfie in his classroom. But after Mr. Ward tried to end the age-gap affair again, Andie became “irate” and went to Mr. Ward’s home where she screamed, she said that she “only touched” him because she wanted him to help her get into Yale, and she destroyed his deceased wife’s paintings. 

Alan Sepinwall opined in his review of the series for Rolling Stone (August 1, 2024): 

Once again, the idea is to contrast the seemingly sweet, wide-eyed, innocent exterior of these girls with the dark secrets they’re trying to uncover... "Good Girl’s Guide" is a reasonably well made version of that [...]

Famous Age-Gap Affair: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (70) and Olivia Nuzzi (30) | Age-Gap FaceTime Sex

Olivia Nuzzi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Dylan Byers aggregated in the Puck post, “We Need to Talk About Olivia & Ryan” (September 20, 2024), that: “[...] Olivia Nuzzi [31], the magazine’s star political reporter, had been suspended from New York [Magazine] due to a “personal relationship” with her former profile subject Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [70] [...]”

Per New York: “Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy was “a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures”.

What standards were violated? Corbin Bolies posted on The Daily Beast that “Married RFK Jr., 70, Bragged He Had ‘Intimate’ Photos of Reporter Olivia Nuzzi, 31” (09.21.24) That’s correct. Nuzzi sexted RFK Jr..

And The Daily Beast and Oli Coleman posted that: “RFK Jr. and star journalist Olivia Nuzzi had 'incredible' FaceTime sex, said they loved each other [...]” (Page Six | September 27, 2024)

In the post, Coleman related that 30-year-old Nuzzi quickly fell madly in love with the married 70-year-old RFK Jr.! Subsequently, the age-gap couple sexted and had “incredible” FaceTime sex - for almost a year. Nuzzi even shared with friends that 70-year-old RFK Jr had “impressive [virtual] sexual stamina”.

[...] Page Six has learned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and New York Magazine scribe Olivia Nuzzi had “incredible” FaceTime sex.

But — after they began talking over text — he “love bombed” her, and she quickly fell so madly in love with him that she lived a double life for nearly a year, sharing long calls, endless texts and virtual sex with the former presidential candidate, all while engaged to her partner of almost a decade.

They had “incredible” sex over FaceTime, according to another source, with Nuzzi noting to pals that the 70-year-old had impressive sexual stamina.

Surprisingly, RFK Jr. remains married to Cheryl Hines of Curb Your Enthusiasm fame, but, unsurprisingly, Nuzzi is no longer engaged to Ryan Lizza - Politico’s chief Washington correspondent. 

Honor Levy’s MY FIRST BOOK: A Nude Teen "Internet Girl" Wins The Omegle Game

Per Penguin Random House, Honor Levy’s My First Book was: “A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Good Morning America, W, Nylon, SheReads, and LitHub”. Here’s the publisher’s synopsis:

Walking the wire between imagination and confession, My First Book marks the arrival of an electric new talent. Honor Levy’s uniquely riveting voice emerges from the chaos of coming of age in Generation Z. Never far from a digital interface, her characters grapple with formative political, existential, and romantic experiences in a web-drenched society on the brink of collapse.

Inventive, ambitious, and frequently surreal, the stories of My First Book are a mirrorball onto the world as it is. Levy illuminates what it is to be at once adorable, special, heavily medicated, consistently panicked, and completely sincere. [...] 

Speaking of “walking the wire between imagination and confession”, Levy’s “Internet Girl” opens with the 11-year-old narrator alone in her bedroom “on a safari on the internet”. She described herself as “little” but “hungry” and “free” yet “empty”; thus, she breaks past the MacBook’s “parental controls”.  

I’m eleven. I’m on Safari on a safari on the internet after school in my bedroom on my computer, my 2006 Apple MacBook Intel Core Duo 2.0 White 2 Ghz/2GB Memory Laptop Computer. I’m alone. I get past the parental controls. I am so hungry to know what’s out there. It’s 2008 and I am so little and so free and so empty and there are 186,727,854 websites on the internet.

Suddenly, she’s viewing porn - the “Two Girls and One Cup” video, then she’s smiling into a webcam at: “a man and a boy and a love and a stranger”, and she browses to Deviant Art where she learns about sex. 

The pre-teen narrator shared:

In Shadow Kiss, the third installment of the Vampire Academy series, the protagonist, [≈17-year-old] Lissa Dragomir, breaks all the rules and ends up naked in bed with the gorgeous [≈24-year-old] Dimitri Belikov. I wonder what exactly it is that they do in bed. I wonder when it will happen to me. When I have a question I Google it.

Consequently, among other inquiries, she Googled: “How many calories in cum?” And another consequence of reading vampire books is that she wanted to be “wanted” and “BE BEST”. 

Subsequently, after middle school and alone, she safaried to, what could only be, Omegle, a website that allowed users to video chat, without registering, with randomly chosen strangers. 

I’m chatting with strangers, random strangers, bad scary men in the blue light. But I’m not afraid because they are in their blue light and I am in mine. It’s after school and I’m alone. I give them my age, sex, location. They give me theirs. 

After exchanging pleasantries, she volunteered to play the [Omegle] game, where a (pre-teen) contestant could earn points by being salacious. For example:

Level 1: Smile 

Level 2: Show Tongue 

Level 3: Suck a Finger 

Level 4: Show Panties 

Level 5: Take Top Off 

Level 6: Show Boobs 

Level 7: Take Off Panties 

Level 8: Insert 1 Finger 

Level 9: Insert More Fingers 

The narrator started playing by showing her tongue and ended the game, a winner, in the nude.

We play a game. It’s a game you may have played too. One point for showing my tongue. Another for showing my bare feet. Flash the camera for five points. Take off our shirts for more. Twirl around the room and so on and so on until I am naked and I have won. 

Like so many schoolgirls who have volunteered over the years to play The Omegle Game, the narrator knew that men found pleasure in seeing her nude body, and she found pleasure in winning - being the best. 

I do not feel dirty or guilty or embarrassed or cheated. I read the vampire books. I knew that the stranger found pleasure in seeing me naked. I played the dress-up games and the dress-down games. I was happy to be his paper doll. I wondered if he knew. I wondered if he understood that I found pleasure in winning, that I was the best. It was a fair trade, like Ritz for Oreos [...] like the time before parental controls for the time after.

Interestingly, The Paris Review referred to Levy as “the voice of a generation”. In the “Encounter” section of The Cut (May 3, 2024),  Brock Colyar shared: “I was sent an advance copy [of Levy’s My First Book] and found it often quite adept at capturing our generation [...]” And, as for Levy’s “Internet Girl”, NPR related: [In “Internet Girl”] Levy’s portrayal of her narrator’s interiority is both compellingly satirical and frighteningly plausible [...]”

Plausible is correct, as thousands of girls have won on Omegle. For example, David Alm related in The Big Feature on Mother Jones (November 4, 2022) that Alauna, an “olive-skinned” 12-year-old with “blond hair and blue eyes”, shared “dozens of images and a video [...] sometimes naked in provocative positions” “with up to 30 men, most of whom she’d met on a chat platform called Omegle.” After her phone was taken away: “Alauna was furious.” And, “She freaked out.” Consequently, Alauna snuck into her mother’s bedroom: “[...] found an old cell phone, and got back on Omegle.” 

Famous Age-Gap Romance: Sean Penn (64) and Valeria Nicov (20s?)

Valeria Nicov (30) and Sean Penn (64)

BreAnna Bell posted for Page Six: "Sean Penn, 64, passionately kisses young actress Valeria Nicov in the streets of Spain" (September 7, 2024) 

In the post, Bell wrote:

Sean Penn may have a new lady in his life. 

The “Mystic River” star, 64, was photographed kissing young actress Valeria Nicov while walking the streets of Madrid, Spain on Saturday. 

May have a new lady in his life? It appears safe to infer that Penn definitely has a new (much younger) lady in his life. However, per Bell, Nicov, a Moldovan actress, has kept her exact age a secret, but: "[...] she’s believed to be in her 20s." However, the Daily Mail's Sharon Mai reported that Nicov is 34 years younger than Penn.

Leila George (24) and Penn (54)

Prior to Nicov, back in 2016, 54-year-old Penn started dating 24-year-old Leila George D'Onofrio. The age-gap couple married in 2020 but filed for divorce approximately a year later. 

Interestingly, D'Onofrio co-starred with James Franco in Lifetime's Mother, May I Sleep with Danger? (2016).

Influencer Hallie Batchelder: (Teen) Anal Sex and Venmo Sugar Daddies

Hallie Batchelder is a New York City-based influencer slash content creator who was recently signed to Alex Cooper’s The Unwell Network. Batchelder was on Cooper’s Call Her Daddy “The Hamptons Confessional” podcast (Aug 28, 2024) Hallie she shared, after having “about seven drinks”, that she recently had anal sex - on the first and apparently last date, that she dabbled with sugar daddies, and she was caught having (teen) anal sex in Aruba - when she was 15. 

“Hi, my name is Hallie Batchelder. I'm about seven drinks in right now, and guys, I'm feeling fucking fuzzy. I'm feeling warm and I'm feeling curious. I'm not gonna lie. Okay, I'm from Boston, Massachusetts, but I live in New York right now. My current relationship status is single. So single. Kind of sad. Honestly, the fall is gonna be really lonely, whatever.” 

“Okay, my confession is, last week, I went on a first date, and honestly, we had oysters as the appetizer. So I'm gonna, like, blame the oysters, because it's like an aphrodisiac. He fucked me in the ass, I'm not gonna lie, and I liked it. I hope they put this in.” 

Next Hallie, who is reportedly now in her late twenties, shared that when she was a college girl, she had sex on the same day with two different neighbors. Why? Because, per Hallie, she can’t turn down an offer for sex.

“Well, have I ever fucked multiple people in one night. There's so many answers to this question. Yes is the immediate answer. I mean, like, are we talking about threesome? Production? Wait, in college, there was one night, so I was on like, the basement floor of my building. That's where I lived. I used to, like, fuck this guy that lives in the basement, but I also fucked this guy lived on the third floor. It's like they were friends in the same frat. They found out about each other. I'm just a girl guys, I don't know, like, I don't know what to do. Like, like, they were both hot. Like, what like, am I gonna say? No, I don't know how to say, No, I'm working on it.”

In almost every age-gap memoir there are contradictions. And Hallie’s (verbal) memoir is no different. For example, Hallie began by stating that she was in a relationship with a man whom was “probably 13 years older”, and whom “used to spend, like, a daddy”. But then she said that since she came from money, she didn’t need money from a sugar daddy.

“Have I ever dabbled with the sugar daddy? I don't know if he was daddy's status. He was like, I mean, he was like, probably 13 years older than me, but he used to spend, like, a daddy.”

“Honestly, I don't need men for their money. Like, I come from money, so like, it like, doesn't bother me. So, like, when guys, like, think I need them for their fucking bag. I'm like, get be fucking frail for a second. I don't need your fucking pockets.”

Hallie went on to elaborate on the man, by relating that he was 36 and that she was turned on by his one-thousand-dollar tips. 

“He was probably 36. I was 23, which to me, was a daddy, but he used to go out to a restaurant. We'd get drinks. Say I was, like, two margaritas. He would always be like, “Should I tip a thou? Should I tip a thou?” And I be like, ‘Yes, tip a thou, and fuck me sideways.’”

Despite the fact that Hallie comes from money, she called her sugar daddy for three weeks to ask him to pay for her breast implants. 

“Okay, I have a funny story, actually, about the sugar daddy. So he was in London one night, and he FaceTimed me and he ghosted me for like, three weeks. So he finally picked up the phone. And I was like, “Okay, hi. I'm thinking about getting my boobs done. And he was like, ‘I'll pay for them, whatever. I'll Venmo you.’”

Apparently, Hallie’s sugar daddy’s best friend was Hallie’s sugar daddy as well. And both of them felt like they owned Hallie's tits. (I wonder what could have given them that impression?)

So him and his best friend, Venmoed for my tits. They, like, both think they own my tits. 

Interestingly, in the end, Hallie’s (wealthy) parents paid for her breast implants, and she “pocketed the money” from her sugar daddies.

“Little did they know my dad and my mom, if you pass your real estate licensing exam, like, I had no job at this point. So, like, if you pass your real estate license [...] we'll pay for that surgery. [I] [p]assed in two weeks, and then I pocketed the money that that guy gave me, and then had [an] amazing rack after that.”

And speaking of Hallie’s parents, Hallie shared that when she was a nymphet, and having anal sex on a pull out bed in Aruba, her mother stepped into the room. 

“Wait, when I was 15, my mom walked in. I mean, getting fucked in the ass on a pull out bed in Aruba.” 

Hallie’s Call Her Daddy episode has raised a (rhetorical) question: Why do influencers slash content creators like Hallie, Talia Lichstein, and Brianna Chickenfry share their (teen) sex stories? Is it for likes? For followers? For clout?  For money? All of the above?