Why We Don't Hear About JLaw And Amy Schumer's Friendship Anymore

When it comes to celebrity best friends, the sudden kinship between Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer that sparked in the summer of 2015 was peak "squad goals" (to borrow a popular phrase from that year). Their buzz began when Schumer shared a gleeful reaction video of Lawrence name-checking her during a Comic-Con interview and things went into hyperdrive once Schumer revealed a shot of the two jet-skiing on vacation together. They were then seen dancing on a piano at a Billy Joel concert, co-presenting at the Golden Globes, making mini-movies with other celeb friends during downtime, and co-writing a comedy film script that sounded like the ideal match for both of them.

Lately, though, we haven't been hearing about or seeing as much of them together. So, what's happened to make the girls press pause on their public palling? Here are some theories as to why we don't hear as much about Amy Schumer and Jennifer Lawrence's friendship these days.

By the time the 2016 Golden Globe Awards came along, the whole entertainment world had grown curious about the inner workings of the Schumer-Lawrence friendship. The two seemed to face the intrigue head-on by openly talking about one another in the media, riffing on the fact that Schumer didn't have a "J-Law"-esque media moniker yet onstage during their shared presentation at the Globes, and using sarcasm to combat any suspicions of infighting over their competing nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy for Trainwreck and Joy (which Lawrence wound up winning). Lawrence even once compared the level of public interest into their relationship to the time and attention spent on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

But it was exactly their forthrightness that began to unravel some of their plans together. As Lawrence told Vanity Fair of their attempt to coordinate their dresses for the show, "I blew it by talking about it, so then if we did [wear the same ensemble] it was expected. But we just wore our own thing." Indeed, the interest in the script they were co-writing was fierce long before it was done, so perhaps the two took a note from this foiled effort to collaborate and realized they should keep some things a surprise going forward.

Although they've said that the script they wrote together with Amy's sister Kim Caramele—described as a sister comedy which had them all in stitches—is still very much in play for production when their schedules will permit, the two might have a little more trouble than expected getting the pic greenlit by a studio right now. Thanks to the unexpected box office and critical letdown of Lawrence's sci-fi pic Passengers, her box office appeal has taken a bit of a hit. And since her value in the comedic arena has yet to be tested—the closest she's gotten to starring in a comedy film was a cut-for-time cameo in Dumb and Dumber To—producers might be hesitant to invest in a passion project like this without such assurances. If (and hopefully when) it does, though, we can count on the two to be back to taking dry wit jabs at each other all the time again.

Fans also seemed to cool on their love of the Schumer-Lawrence bond once both of them expressed seemingly tone-deaf perspectives on the subject of weight in Hollywood in the same month. Lawrence, who's long declared herself a larger girl by Hollywood standards and has been criticized for fat-shaming herself in interviews, caused a stir when she told Harper's Bazaar that she wanted Hollywood to adjust its expectations of actresses weight, and it wasn't her sentiment that rubbed people the wrong way; it was her choice of words.

She told the mag in April 2016, "I would like us to make a new normal-body type. Everybody says, 'We love that there is somebody with a normal body!' And I'm like, 'I don't feel like I have a normal body.' I do Pilates every day. I eat, but I work out a lot more than a normal person.I think we've gotten so used to underweight that when you are a normal weight, it's like, 'Oh, my God, she's curvy.' Which is crazy... The bare minimum, just for me, would be to up the ante. At least so I don't feel like the fattest one."

Schumer offered a similarly panned hot take by reacting to being labeled plus-size by Glamour magazine on Instagram by writing, "I think there's nothing wrong with being plus size. Beautiful healthy women. Plus size is considered size 16 in America. I go between a size 6 and an 8. @glamourmag put me in their plus size only issue without asking or letting me know and it doesn't feel right to me. Young girls seeing my body type thinking that is plus size? What are your thoughts? Mine are not cool glamour not glamourous." In both cases, the women were chided for taking issue with their own weight being associated with those terms by defending their sizes, tacitly indicating that there was something wrong with being considered plus-size. For women who'd been seen as beacons of body positivity, the responses seemed unusually off-message and disappointing to some.

Their controversial comments on weight classification weren't the only popularity setbacks the ladies experienced that year. Schumer was also accused by fellow comedians of lifting jokes for her stand-up specials, and there was evidence aplenty to support some of the claims, leaving many fans to wonder if this spitfire celeb was really as original as she'd appeared to be. Schumer denied stealing anyone's jokes, telling The Chicago Tribune, "I just would never do that. That would be so stupid for me to do that." But still, the stain of the accusation has lingered.

Meanwhile, Lawrence's usual brand of deadpan snark went from cute to controversial when she criticized a reporter behind-the-scenes at the Golden Globes the same year. While Lawrence was previously praised for her realness with other cheeky pressline stunts, like bragging about taking a shot at the 2013 Oscars and flipping the bird to photographers, her antics came under fire when she snapped at a reporter for using his phone to attempt to record the session with his phone. She said, "You can't live your whole life behind your phone, bro. You gotta live your life." And then when he attempted to ask her about her day at the Oscars, she went in harder, saying, "We're at the Golden Globes. If you'd put your phone down, you'd know that." What she didn't realize, despite the fact that the Globes is an event coordinated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and boasts many international reporters, is that the journalist was foreign and may have been using his phone to translate his question, making her remarks seem much less funny or endearing and bordering on cruel and snooty.

Unlike when they first became friends, both Schumer and Lawrence since became involved in romantic relationships that might have put a strain on their friendship. Lawrence is reportedly dating director Darren Aronofsky, whose thriller pic Mother! she appears in, while Schumer dated furniture designer Ben Hanisch until they broke up in May 2017. The rumor mill has been spinning about gossip that Schumer doesn't care for Aronofsky and that Lawrence's friendships have been given the backburner treatment since they got together.

Even if everyone's getting along swimmingly, having a significant other in the picture certainly can hamper those plans the two said they had to grow old together. Lawrence had told Glamour magazine, "Amy and I have a life plan ... Amy's always wanted to live on Martha's Vineyard, and we saw this house, and we're like, 'This is where we're gonna Grey Gardens, and we're gonna grow old and crazy together.' That's our life plan." As nice as it might've been for the girls to be planning their own sort of real-life Golden Girls revival, things could easily change once affairs of the heart come into play.

Although Schumer and Lawrence's newfound friendship was certainly a highlight of the summer of 2015, both women have also been a party to several other buzzy friend groups, which has only increased their sphere of influence even more but has also, in turn, taken some of the attention off the duo as a, well, duo.

For example, Lawrence became close with La La Land star Emma Stone after offering her some of that signature sass—as she told Vanity Fair, "She texted me that she got my number from Woody [Harrelson, Lawrence's Hunger Games co-star who appeared alongside Stone in Zombieland]. I replied, 'F*** off!' And we've been really good friends ever since." (Indeed the two were spotted hanging out with Adele in New York City shortly after Lawrence's friendship with Schumer was atop everyone's feeds.) Then, the new club expanded with the addition of Room star Brie Larson soon after, which meant that it was full-on love square between them and Schumer because of her long-standing friendship with her Trainwreck co-star. So, while Schumer and Lawrence might still be tight, it's not just a two-way street anymore, and fellow A-listers like Stone and Larson are very much in the mix as well.

While Lawrence seems to relish having VIPs as neighbors—for example, she told Vogue about how much she likes to drop in on her new neighbors Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher—Schumer's expressed a distaste for keeping close company with others in the limelight. As she told Total Film magazine (via RTE), "Famous people are exhausting and too much work to be friends with, other than Jennifer Lawrence." With their ever-expanding circle of friends practically having their own shelves of shiny prizes each, it wouldn't be surprising if Schumer grew weary of all the attention surrounding the others and retreated to her otherwise quiet life of randomly dropping thousands of dollars on un-expecting store clerks as a thank you for allowing her to use the restroom.

Schumer makes no secret about the fact that her sister comes first, and Lawrence even had to field a question from her long-time best friend Laura Simpson about whose friendship meant more to her during an appearance on Watch What Happens Live. Simpson, who'd been Lawrence's date to the Oscars in 2014 and earned a bit of viral fame for her own coverage of the fancy affair, called in to ask Lawrence, "Who's your best friend, me or Amy Schumer?" Lawrence's answer was quick and impassioned as she said, "You, Sausage! You know I love you. God. I know, she got upset after the SeaDoo picture came out, the jetski picture ... You're my Sausage. Nobody else could ever [push you out]."

Schumer also said that reports of them taking the top spot on each other's speed dials were exaggerated, telling E! News, "We really like each other, but I think the media blew it up. We're not BFFs. We're just Fs, but we're really good Fs. I have BFFs since I was 8 years old so it'll be tough to uproot them."

As exciting and unexpected as their friendship is/was, even Lawrence knows that the buzz about their bond has since quieted quite a bit. She told Vanity Fair in December, 2016, "My brother asked me the other day, 'Everybody online thinks you and Amy aren't friends anymore.' And I said, 'Oh, really, because everything online is always true.'"

She also confirmed that the two are still total buds and still want to shoot their comedy flick together if and when their schedules will allow, but with each of them attached to a boatload of other projects—among them, Lawrence's turn as a Russian femme fatale in Red Sparrow and Schumer's leading role in I Feel Pretty—it might take longer than the instant gratification-hungry fans who've hung onto their every word about one another might prefer. But don't give up hope for these two just yet!