Taylor Swift just released a new music video for “Opalite,” which has multiple celebrity cameo appearances — including Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson, who recently appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City.
When Swift released her latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” in October, she made an appearance on “The Graham Norton Show” alongside multiple big names, Gleeson included.
During the show, Gleeson joked that he would love to be in a Taylor Swift music video. That lighthearted joke sparked an idea for Swift that turned into the detailed production of “Opalite.”
“He was joking! Except that in that moment during the interview, I was instantly struck with an *idea*. And so a week later he received an email script I’d written for the Opalite video, where he was playing the starring role,” Swift wrote in a post on X. “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. Like a school group project but for adults and it isn’t mandatory.”
The video follows Swift and Gleeson, who both start out as lonely loners seeking companionship from a rock and a cactus, respectively. They get their hands on a magic product in spray bottle form called “Opalite” that transforms them and brings them together.
The rest of the video follows silly ’90s tropes, like matching denim mall photo shoots, hanging out at the mall and doing aerobics. Each of the guests that appeared alongside Swift on the show also appear in the music video. Here are their roles in the video:
- Lewis Capaldi is the mall photographer who joins in on Swift and Gleeson’s glam photoshoot.
- Jodie Turner Smith leads the aerobics class Swift is following along with at home.
- Cillian Murphy appears in an advertisement for “Opalite” and does a voiceover talking about the product.
- Greta Lee cameos as a singer-songwriter on MTV.
- Graham Norton plays an Opalite salesman.
“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,” Swift wrote. “You might even recognize some friendly faces from The Eras Tour.”
Domhnall Gleeson is having a bit of a moment
This isn’t the only big premiere Gleeson is enjoying at the moment. The Irish actor had a movie, “The Incomer,” debut at Sundance recently that won the NEXT Innovator Award presented by Adobe.
“In a way it’s my favorite sort of film,” Gleeson told the Deseret News about “The Incomer.” “It doesn’t have the biggest budget, but it’s really funny. It’s got loads of heart and it is unique. It just feels like totally its own thing. The film knows itself inside out. As a viewer that’s always what I’m looking for, is a film that really knows itself. It feels like the sort of film I want to be in.”
Why Taylor Swift premiered her music video on Spotify, Apple Music, not YouTube
The video first premiered on Spotify and Apple music exclusively. It will debut on YouTube on Sunday.
The reason for this is likely because YouTube changed its policy on Billboard’s charts so that views on the platform no longer count toward the numbers on the charts, Deseret News previously reported.