She and Jackson first met in 2006 and, as she later described it, their first date was a comedy of errors.
First of all, she told Conan O’Brien in 2013, she didn’t agree to a date-date. “I agreed to have drinks with him,” Kruger explained. “I actually had plans with someone else for dinner, so I know I didn’t say yes to dinner.”
But just as she was getting ready to leave at 9 p.m., Jackson said they had dinner reservations. “And I felt really bad because he looked very eager,” she recalled, “and he put on a clean shirt. And so I was like, ‘OK, fine. Let’s go.'”
Kruger said she had an allergic reaction to the flowers at the awkwardly romantic restaurant he took her to, and then he drove her back to her hotel in his “piece of s–t” car. When he leaned in to kiss her goodnight, Kruger remembered, “I swear to God, at the end I was like, ‘Should I slap him?'”
Jackson was apparently swept off his feet, because he defied her expectations and sent her flowers and a box of tissues to curb any sudden sneezing fits the next day.