Taylor Swift has been front and centre this month, with the 36-year-old releasing her highly-anticipated Opalite music video.
Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl album has been making headlines since its October release, with the Father Figure singer dropping her long-awaited music videos one by one.
And after a viral appearance on The Graham Norton Show to promote the album, Swift decided to cast all of her fellow interviewees from the episode and Graham Norton himself in the Opalite music video.
“The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo for The Life of a Showgirl”, Swift has since explained in a lengthy statement.
“I was a guest on one of my favorite shows, The Graham Norton Show,” she continued, explaining that she felt “ridiculous lucky” to be paired with Cillian Murphy, Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lewis Capaldi.
And when Gleeson made a joke about wanting to be in a Taylor Swift video, the singer recalled being “struck with an idea” to have him “playing the starring role”.
“I had this thought that it would be wild if all of our fellow guests on the Graham Norton show that night, including Graham himself, could be a part of it too,” she continued. “Like a school group project but for adults and it isn’t mandatory. To my delight, everyone from the show made the effort to time travel back to the 90’s with us and help with this video.”
The Opalite music video has unsurprisingly gone viral, with its star-studded cast delighting the internet.
And in a sweet update, Swift has now shared a two-part extended version online, featuring camcorder footage from the day, BTS dance training and videos of Swift directing the celebrity cameos on set.
“‘Did you see Taylor’s face after you said that?,'” Gleeson recalled someone asking him after his Graham Norton Show joke that inspired the music video. “I was like, ‘There’s no way she’s thinking about it.'”
“Thank god because I think we were all thinking it,” Jodie Turner-Smith reflected.
The extended release also shows behind the scenes footage of Gleeson being surprised with the news that he was filming a dance sequence on the day.
“This dance thing is new. I want everyone to know that,” he jokes in the now viral video, with Swift confessing: “I didn’t tell Dom he was going to dance…. I just thought it would be better to tell him in person.”
“I never want to forget a single detail of this hysterical shoot, and now I don’t have to,” Swift told fans on Instagram this weekend. “Excited to share more of the Opalite Music Video with two extended versions full of dance lessoning, our phenomenal cameos, camcorder footage, gigantic scrunchies & fanny pack angles!”
Well, this is exciting.
Taylor Swift’s two-part extended version of the Opalite music video is available to watch now on Apple Music, Tidal, Spotify and Amazon Music.