Paul Giamatti’s new girlfriend played his on-screen dominatrix

Recent Golden Globe winner Paul Giamatti met his new girlfriend in the most unusual of circumstances: In an S&M dungeon.

Paul Giamatti and Clara Wong.

Actor Paul Giamatti stepped out at this week’s Golden Globe awards with a new woman on his arm – and eagle-eyed fans soon pieced together that the pair had quite an unusual meeting.

Giamatti, 56, took home the Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy Film award during Monday’s ceremony for his starring role in The Holdovers.

There to cheer him on was actress Clara Wong, who fans on social media soon pointed out was not just his new girlfriend, but a former co-star.

New couple Giamatti and actress Clara Wong at an event this week. Picture: ANGELA WEISS / AFP

Wong appeared on several episodes of Giamatti’s TV series Billions – playing a dominatrix named Troy that his lawyer character secretly visits.

Giamatti and Wong appear in several racy scenes together in the show, with her dominatrix character subjecting him to all manner of kinky things.

He made some revealing comments about their scenes together during a recent red carpet appearance, when asked what it was like to have a cigarette put out on his chest during their S&M scenes together.

“It was great. I enjoyed it very much,” Giamatti told Page Six.

Giamatti and Wong on-screen together in Billions.

“I did! I enjoyed it — it was actually really kind of interesting. I was genuinely tied up in all those knots, and I found it very, uh, soothing.”

Outside of this new relationship with Wong, Giamatti largely keeps his personal life private: He married Elizabeth Cohen in 1997 and the couple had a son together, Samuel, but broke up at an unknown time in the 2000s.

Meanwhile, social media went wild over a candid post-Globes photo of Giamatti that emerged online earlier this week.

It showed the actor, still in his tux and with his newly-won Golden Globe award next to him, sitting in an In-N-Out burger fast food restaurant and enjoying a late-night meal.

“This is the most Paul Giamatti thing I’ve ever seen,” wrote film critic Zoe Rose Bryant, while filmmaker and podcaster Sergio Muñoz Esquer captioned it simply: “My king.”

Originally published as Paul Giamatti’s new girlfriend played his on-screen dominatrix