Taylor Swift closed out “The Life of a Showgirl” press tour with one last stop on “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” Appearing on Tuesday’s broadcast – Meyers’ 1,713th episode, a number that fittingly adds up to 12, matching Swift’s 12th studio album (and nodding to her lucky 13) – was appropriate to the numerology that’s followed her entire career.
Swift and Meyers covered her record-breaking new release, which became the most-consumed album in a single week hours before the taping started, and the self-directed “Fate of Ophelia” music video that reunited her with Eras Tour dancers and backup singers.
Known for keeping her songs locked down with click tracks, she revealed she played the top-secret release for her dancers before the music video was filmed. “If they were on the Eras tour, they know how to keep a secret,” she said.
Looking back on her stadium run, Swift admitted to some FOMO watching the VIP tent each night. During one of her London shows, then-boyfriend, now fiancé Travis Kelce was joined by hometown friends and A-listers Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, Hugh Grant and Greta Gerwig – Kelce’s favorite director. “He loves Greta Gerwig. He loves her movies, he loves her range,” Swift said.
After the concert – as part of what Swift described as their routine car-ride debriefs – Kelce told her he was disappointed that Gerwig didn’t laugh at his “Barbie” joke. She recalled him telling who he thought was Gerwig, “I love ‘Barbie.’ I’m just Ken, too,” before pointing to Swift. He said she “smiled politely but didn’t say anything.”
Later, after seeing videos online of Gerwig and Kelce “dancing all night,” Swift realized the case of mistaken identity. “Do the math,” she said. “Is there any chance at all, baby, that you complimented Hugh Grant’s wife, Anna, on her movie, ‘Barbie?’ And she politely nodded, because she didn’t have the heart to tell you she didn’t direct it?”
But with the Eras tour wrapped and the “Showgirl” rollout winding down, Swift is shifting her focus to wedding planning. Meyers pitched invitation ideas — from an electronic blast to a framed print, since “people will do it anyway.” “You can say it’s my idea, so nobody says you’re being cocky or arrogant or anything,” he joked.
Swift also reflected on when her head of security called her when Zoë Kravitz’s snake got loose in her house during the Palisades fire, her recent hyperfixation on baking bread, and meeting Meyers on SNL in 2009.
“[Hosting SNL] the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me in my life at 19,” she said. The two reminisced over her Twilight-recreated skit, which parodied one of the biggest films of all time. “Now that I look back, I am so lucky that we got to like do anything around something as iconic and as 2009 as ‘Twilight.’”
More than a decade later, she jokingly credits that SNL week with preparing her for the chaos of the Eras Tour. “It was absolutely the most amount of times I’ve changed clothes,” Swift said. “I knew I could do the Eras Tour. I can get these costume changes. This is the most fact-paced thing ever.”
That same sense of readiness carried her into this latest chapter – her 12th album release, and the one she calls her favorite yet. “It’s been the most joyful album release I’ve ever had,” she said.
