E! News has a new interview with Courteney Cox’s Cougar Town costar, Josh Hopkins. Courteney was photographed with Josh looking very coupled up in St. Barts, but has denied that she’s romantically involved with him and recently said on Howard Stern that she hasn’t screwed anyone during her separation from David Arquette. (She also gave TMI about how David always wanted to have sex at inappropriate moments.) Josh actually explained it better than any of the other denials or articles I’ve read about it, and said that a lot of the cast and crew was there since they were filming on location and were just taking a break.

“You’re talking about St. Barts… this is how that happened. We’re shooting the last episode, we’re all talking about what we’re going to do on hiatus. She’s like ‘I’m going to the beach…’

“We went with a bunch of friends, but of course the pictures are just of she and I frolicking. They frame it like that and then the stories, that’s great, they’re like ‘An unnamed source saw them being suspicious.'”

It looked suspicious to me because the pictures were so incredibly clear and most all of the agencies had them. It’s hard to believe that several paparazzi agencies all paid for a photographer to go to St. Barts just to follow the C-listers of Cougar Town while they were filming. I think that these were meant as promotion for the show and that Courteney cosigned the cheating rumors in exchange for some publicity. US Weekly even carried these with a breathless report on how Josh and Courteney shared a villa. She’s been inviting the paps and dealing with the resulting stories because she wants people to watch her show.

I still think there was something to the rumors that she was with her other co-star, Brian Von Holt, and that she was fibbing on Stern about not sleeping with anyone else. Maybe this guy is telling the truth, though. I sound naive here, don’t I?

Photo credit: Fame Pictures