Academy Award-winning actress Sandra Bullock has recently faced a personal tragedy. Her partner of eight years, photographer Bryan Randall passed away on August 5 after a private battle with ALS. He was 57 years old. The Internet poured heartfelt notes of condolences to the acclaimed actress. She was praised for her strength during Randall’s three-year battle with ALS.
Amidst several messages of condolences, the Internet also found a clip of Bullock joining Jada Pinkett Smith in her infamous show Red Table Talk. The clip shows Sandra Bullock talking about her partner Randall and the topic of marriage while seemingly throwing shade at Pinkett Smith’s famous ‘entanglement’ with rapper August Alsina during her separation from husband Will Smith.
Bryan Randall’s Battle With ALS
Actress Sandra Bullock is known for her phenomenal performances in blockbusters such as Speed, Miss Congeniality, A Time To Kill, and Gravity. She received the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Blind Slide. The same year, she also gave a huge box office success with the Ryan Reynolds starring romantic-comedy The Proposal.
After her divorce from her then-husband, TV host Jesse James, Sandra Bullock met photographer Bryan Randall at a birthday party for her son Louis Bullock in 2015. The couple then made their partnership public in the same year when they attended the wedding of Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux.
On August 5, 2023, Randall’s family released a statement saying that the photographer had passed away after a three-year-long battle with ALS. The statement revealed that Randall had chosen to keep his battle with the disease private. The statement read,
“…We are immensely grateful to the tireless doctors who navigated the landscape of this illness with us and to the astounding nurses who became our roommates, often sacrificing their own families to be with ours. At this time we ask for privacy to grieve and to come to terms with the impossibility of saying goodbye to Bryan.”
Sandra Bullock’s sister Gisenne Bullock-Brado also penned a tribute to Bryan Randall and appreciated the nursing staff as well as her sister for taking care of Randall.
Sandra Bullock’s Alleged Dig At Jada Pinkett Smith
In their eight-year relationship, Sandra Bullock and Bryan Randall never married. While rumors made the rounds about her alleged engagement with Randall and subsequent marriage, Bullock’s team shut them down. In the show Red Table Talk, a talk show hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, her mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, and daughter Willow Smith, Bullock had this to say when she was asked about marriage,
“I found the love of my life. We share two beautiful children— three children, [Randall’s] older daughter. It’s the best thing ever.”
In the same interview, Bullock mentions that she does not need a marriage to be present with her partner. She said,
“I don’t wanna say do it like I do it, but I don’t need a paper to be a devoted partner and devoted mother. I don’t need to be told to be ever present in the hardest of times. I don’t need to be told to weather a storm with a good man.”
This statement has been speculated to be a dig at Jada Pinkett Smith’s infamous scandal, where she claimed to have been in a relationship with rapper and R&B singer August Alsina during a time when she and her husband Will Smith had separated. The claim was made on the same talk show where she had invited Will Smith. The episode went viral, with the Internet taking sides and Will Smith grief struck face becoming a meme. Pinkett Smith’s description of her relationship with Alsina as an ‘entanglement’ also went viral.
In the aftermath of Will Smith’s famous slap to comedian Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards, the incident was brought up again. Now, with Sandra Bullock’s statement resurfacing, the Internet seems to have remembered the Smiths again.
Source: People
