The Moment
Jaime King may have a new man – or at least a new plus-one – and the timing is raising eyebrows about her engagement.
The “Sin City” and “Hart of Dixie” star, 46, was last publicly known to be engaged to investment banker Austin Sosa. The two got engaged in July 2025 after meeting through friends in December 2024, and her camp happily confirmed it at the time.
But now, according to a January 5, 2026 report from Page Six, multiple onlookers say King has been out in Los Angeles with hotel heir and mogul Vikram Chatwal, 54. The pair were reportedly seen looking affectionate at Hollywood staple Chateau Marmont, then spotted together again days later at his own Bombay Palace restaurant.
Reps for King and Sosa have not responded to requests for comment, and nobody has gone on record to say the engagement is over. Still, cozy nights with a known playboy hotelier are not exactly the energy of a woman deep in wedding-planning mode.
The Take
I’ll say it: this looks less like “just friends” and more like a soft launch of Jaime King’s post-engagement era – but the keyword here is looks.
On paper, you could not script a more on-brand Hollywood plot twist. King finally closes the book on her 17-year marriage to director Kyle Newman (their divorce was finalized in 2023), finds a seemingly solid finance guy in Sosa, then suddenly pops up arm-in-arm with a flashy hotel magnate known for $20 million weddings and model exes. It’s like trading in a 401(k) for a Vegas high-roller table overnight.
But we need to be honest about what we actually know versus what the photos and whispers are selling us. Being affectionate at Chateau Marmont is practically a house rule; people have mistaken close friends for new couples in that lobby for decades. And going to a man’s own restaurant is… well, exactly what you do with a restaurateur.
At the same time, the silence around her engagement is loud. When King and Sosa got engaged, her team had zero problem confirming it and even talking about how happy her kids were. Now? Crickets. No ring update, no “we’re doing great,” no cheery denial of split rumors.
My read: even if King and Chatwal aren’t officially a couple yet, it sure feels like the Sosa chapter is winding down. Hollywood rarely announces breakups in real time; it lets the optics do the talking first. This has that vibe.
Receipts
Confirmed
- Jaime King finalized her divorce from director Kyle Newman in 2023 after 17 years of marriage, as previously reported in entertainment press and court coverage.
- King got engaged to investment banker Austin Sosa in July 2025 after meeting through friends in December 2024. Her rep confirmed the engagement to People magazine in summer 2025, adding that she was “happy to share this moment with her children” and that they had a loving bond with Sosa and his family.
- King has two sons, James and Leo. Leo has been publicly described as Taylor Swift’s godson in past coverage.
- Page Six reported on January 5, 2026 that multiple witnesses saw King and hotelier Vikram Chatwal looking affectionate at Chateau Marmont and later together at his Bombay Palace restaurant in Los Angeles.
- Vikram Chatwal is a well-known hotelier and the son of Sant Singh Chatwal. He helped open the Chatwal Hotel in the Lambs Club building in New York’s Times Square and has a history of high-profile relationships, including with Spanish model Esther Canadas and author/host Padma Lakshmi.
- Chatwal married Indian socialite Priya Sachdev in 2006 in a widely reported, extremely lavish wedding often cited as costing around $20 million; they later split in 2011.
Unverified / Reported Only
- That Jaime King’s engagement to Austin Sosa is officially over. There has been no public statement, filing, or on-the-record confirmation of a breakup as of this writing.
- That King and Vikram Chatwal are in an exclusive romantic relationship. What’s on the record is that they were seen together and described as looking “affectionate” by unnamed sources, which is an observation, not a confirmed relationship status.
Key Sources (Human-Readable)
Page Six report on Jaime King and Vikram Chatwal sightings (January 5, 2026); prior engagement confirmation and quotes via People magazine coverage of King’s engagement to Austin Sosa (July 2025); King’s own comments about first meeting Sosa, previously shared in an interview with Us Weekly in 2025.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you haven’t checked in on Jaime King since the early 2000s, here’s a quick refresher. She started out as a model, then broke through in movies like “Pearl Harbor” and “Sin City” before becoming a TV favorite on the charming Southern drama “Hart of Dixie.” She married director Kyle Newman in 2007; the two share sons James and Leo and went through a very public, very drawn-out split that finally wrapped in 2023.
Vikram Chatwal, meanwhile, is nightlife and hotel royalty. He’s the son of prominent hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal and has been behind several boutique and luxury properties, including the Chatwal Hotel in New York. His personal life has always been as splashy as his hotels: a $20 million wedding to socialite Priya Sachdev in 2006, a glamorous social circle that has included models and actors, and a once-noted close friendship with Lindsay Lohan. He largely stepped back from the spotlight after a widely reported, regrettable 2016 incident involving dogs in Soho, but appears to be easing back into the social game.
What s Next
So where does this go from here? In Hollywood, the next moves are usually very predictable.
If the engagement to Sosa is done, expect one of three rollouts: a bland joint statement about going their separate ways, a quiet scrub of photos and mentions with zero explanation, or a future profile where King casually refers to him as “my ex” and we all retroactively timeline the breakup.
On the Vikram front, the real tell will be whether these hangouts move from low-lit LA spots to obvious, camera-ready appearances: a red carpet, a charity gala, a front-row fashion show. If they show up somewhere together where publicists and step-and-repeats live, that’s when you can move “maybe” into “okay, this is a thing.”
Also worth watching: King’s own social media. A missing engagement ring in a close-up selfie, a cryptic quote about “new beginnings,” or a soft-launch photo across a table with just a man’s sleeve visible – this is the modern press release.
For now, all we truly have are sightings, timing, and some very familiar Hollywood patterns. King has every right to date, change her mind, or simply have dinner with a friend without issuing a press bulletin. But fame means that every dinner, every cuddle in a dark corner, gets read like a press release anyway.
How do you see it: are we too quick to turn every cozy dinner into a “new couple” headline, or is this just the unavoidable trade-off when you live your love life in public?
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