Entertainment
Are Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield friends in real life?
Holly and Phil at the NTAs in 2020 (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield seem like the best of pals when they present ITV’s This Morning each week.
And, of course, the successful TV duo are also one of the highlights of Dancing On Ice each year.
Schofe even recently joked that he was ‘devastated’ about Holly’s new presenting gig with another male presenter.
But are Holly and Schofe as close off-screen as they are on?
Find out what they’ve said about their real-life friendship here.
Are Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield friends in real life?
Yes, Holly Willoughby, 40, and Phillip Schofield, 59, are good friends away from the cameras.
They’ve been This Morning colleagues since 2009 – and are often in fits of laughter on the show – but they also have a fun relationship off-screen.
Phillip said on their hit morning show that Holly is ‘the sister I never had’.
The pair are known to have gone on holiday to Portugal together – along with Phillip’s wife Steph, Holly’s husband Dan, and their respective kids.
In a 2016 episode of Loose Women, Phillip said: ‘We hang out. What’s lovely is that my Steph and Holly’s Dan, everyone gets on, so it’s a foursome, we go out for a meal, you know… all the kids get on.’
Holly added: ‘We spend so many hours together, then when we’re off in the summer, we spend a lot of time together. We just get on quite well. We think in the same way.’
Rumours of a rift emerged in 2019, after Holly stepped in for Ant McPartlin on the 2018 series of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here – jetting off to Australia for several weeks, according to The Sun.
Holly and Phil appear to make each other crack up at Wimbledon (Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage)
Phillip was accused of being ‘jealous’ of his pal’s success – but any claims of a feud have always been firmly denied.
And Holly directly refuted the claims to Newsbeat at the time, saying they couldn’t work together so much ‘without getting on’.
Though Holly and Phil obviously have a great time, in emotional moments, the pair are there for each other, too.
In February 2020, when Phillip revealed he was gay live on This Morning, Holly was by his side.
‘I could not have done this, if it hadn’t been [with] you,’ he told his tearful co-star.
In July 2021, we caught another glimpse of their real-life friendship, with Schofe joking about Holly’s new presenting gig with Bradley Walsh.
During Holly’s appearance on The One Show, Phillip sent in a video clip sarcastically admitting that he was ‘devastated’ Holly had found ‘another man’.
Holly quipped in response: ‘I’d love to say I’ve traded him in for a younger model but that’s not the case with Bradley Walsh.’
And just a few weeks earlier, we saw the pair sitting side-by-side and having a good giggle at a Wimbledon tennis match.
So, case settled: Holly and Phil are definitely friends in real life.
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