Screenshot: YouTube, the Associated press

Have you ever gone to show someone a photo from your phone and had to kindly yet sternly ask them that they DO NOT SCROLL any further?

Or, hey, maybe—for your own safety—you’ve made a rule to just never open your camera roll in public?

Point is, the gays in particular know it can be risky business looking at their photo app around others, lest they want to give people an unsolicited peek at some of their lewdest and nudest selfies. Yes, the Hidden folder is our friend, but we don’t always remember to properly sort our pictures before putting our phones in someone else’s hands…

It’s a lesson Andrew Garfield nearly learned the hard way this past weekend while he was doing press for his upcoming romantic drama We Live In Time.

But first, some context: the film reunites the actor with filmmaker John Crowley, who previously directed Garfield 2007’s Boy A, his breakthrough role. We Live In Time follows the decades-spanning romance of Garfield’s Tobias and Florence Pugh’s Almut who fall in love, start a family, and eventually learn one of them has a life-threatening illness.

In other words: Yes, this one’s going to make you cry. A lot.

Which makes it even more surprising that the movie inadvertently spawned one of the silliest memes of the year. In an early promotional image for We Live In Time, Garfield and Pugh’s characters are being all cutesy and lovey-dovey on a carousel, only to be outshone by a bug-eyed, golden horse creeping into frame.

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It’s unclear how no one thought the shiny stallion wouldn’t steal the spotlight given how prominently it’s featured in the photo, but it quickly captured the public’s imagination. The talented denizens of the internet ran with it, swapping the horse’s head with the actors—and then pretty much editing into every other image imaginable.

For example:

Naturally, when We Live In Time premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this past weekend, people were curious if the film’s stars had caught wind of the strange phenomenon, and just about every journalist imaginable took it upon themselves to ask.

And of course they were aware! These are two funny, charming, very online stars we’re talking about here. Though that doesn’t mean they weren’t conflicted…

Speaking with The Independent, Pugh admits she was initially concerned about the horse’s prevalence—that the absurd meme might overpower what’s meant to be a beautiful, humanist love story, especially since it appears in the movie during a pivotal moment for its central couple.

“I was just so worried that that amazing, gorgeous, glittery moment was going to be sh*t on by this horse meme—which was hilarious, sure,” she shares. “But I was like, ‘No! Not at that point in the movie.'”

Image Credit: ‘We Live In Time,’ Studio Canal / A24

Garfield, on the other hand, was much quicker to embrace it, saying flat-out that he loves the horse meme despite questioning who approved the image in the first place:

“I was about to go into a retreat for six days where I wouldn’t have my phone. And I saw this image for our film that had been released. And I noticed the horse, the actors recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a choice, man. Ah, I’m sure I’m the only one to notice it.'”

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He continues: “I turn my phone off for six days. When I’m in the departure lounge coming back from wherever I was, I turn my phone on finally. And it’s just horse meme. I was wrong. People noticed it. And [Stephen] Colbert noticed and did a whole monologue on it. Honestly, I was crying.”

As the co-stars begin sharing their personal favorite horse edits, Garfield remembers he has some saved on his phone, which he pulls out of his pocket only to pause and think: “Actually, I’m not going to open up my photos right now.”

As he’s laughing, Pugh wonders aloud what’s on his phone.

“Just lots of d*ck pics,” Garfield says with a grin before remembering to add, “My own.” Wow, the stars really are just like us.

After he jokingly asks to cut that out of the interview, Pugh responds: “I didn’t know you could do press like this. I didn’t know you could say something outrageous and be like, ‘Cut.’ What’s worse is they’re next to your horse pics.

“It does look like the ratio is off,” Garfield responds as his film’s publicist audibly sighs in the background. Oh my god, Andrew, how many nudes do you have in that camera roll?

Come to think of it, maybe celebrities really don’t know they can sort images into a hidden folder. Remember when Chris Evans accidentally gave his followers a peek into his unedited camera roll and gave them all an eyeful?

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Perhaps somebody should offer Hollywood stars a course on app management and social media privacy. Hell, better yet, we’ll volunteer to go through their photos and do the sorting for them. For free! There, problem solved.

In any event, Garfield better get that phone on lock and keep it close, especially since the press tour for We Live In Time is just beginning. A24 will be releasing the film stateside some time this fall, and while it sure doesn’t sound like there’s anything queer about it, the gays have long loved Garfield and the sapphics adore Pugh, so you better believe we’ll be turning up at the theater in droves to see it.

And, hey, who knows: Maybe you’ll even get a glimpse of Andrew Garfield’s stallion?

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