August 11, 2026 at 10:16am EDT

Brad Pitt‘s latest revelation is putting a surprising moment from Taylor Swift‘s wedding back in the spotlight.

Let’s dial it back to Swift and Travis Kelce’s July 3 wedding, which Pitt and his girlfriend, Ines de Ramon, attended. A Page Six source revealed that they were “shocked” when they saw the Heart of the Beast star drinking at the event. The insider, along with most of Pitt’s fans, had been under the impression that he was sober.

That’s why the 62-year-old’s admission in his Esquire interview suddenly made sense — Pitt is drinking again. “I was sober for seven years. And then I got back off the wagon,” Pitt revealed on August 10. “In a more restrained manner. I got overconfident a couple times, went, ‘Yep, nope, not good for me.’ Not in big quantities.”

He claimed to the magazine he can have “a few” glasses of wine, but he “can’t have a lot.” Pitt added, “I have to be professional about it.”

That is a huge 180-degree turn from his admission on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in June 2025 that his drinking was a turning point in his life.

“I was pretty much on my knees, and I was really open,” Pitt recalled. “I was trying anything, anything anyone threw at me. It was a difficult time. I needed rebooting. I needed to wake the f—k up in some areas. And it just meant a lot to me. Everyone was so open.”

His sobriety came on the heels of an alleged domestic violence incident with Angelina Jolie and their six kids, Maddox, 24, Pax, 22, Zahara, 21, Shiloh, 20, Knox, 18, and Vivienne, 18, on a private plane in 2016. Jolie filed for divorce shortly after the incident, and most of their kids have legally dropped his last name.

Pitt has even credited Bradley Cooper in the past for getting him on the right track. Cooper got sober in 2004 at the age of 29, and has helped many Hollywood celebrities change their lives.

“I got sober because of this guy. And every day’s been happier ever since,” Pitt told the audience at the 2020 National Board of Review Annual Awards Gala after Cooper handed him his statuette. “I love you, and I thank you.”