Taylor, where the hell have you been, loca? Despite Taylor Swift’s apparent eagerness to land a role in 2009’s The Twilight Saga: New Moon — the second movie in the blockbuster franchise — the film’s director turned her down.
On the Tuesday, August 16, episode of Ashley Greene and Melanie Howe’s “The Twilight Effect” podcast, director Chris Weitz revealed why he rejected the “Cardigan” singer, 32, despite her Twilight stan status.
“Taylor Swift and I had the same agent at the time, and he said like, ‘Taylor would like to be in this movie. Not because of you, but because she’s a Twihard,’” he told Howe and Greene, 35 — who portrayed Alice Cullen throughout the franchise. “‘She will be someone at the cafeteria, or the diner, or whatever but she just wants to be in this movie.’”
Weitz, however, felt that Swift’s presence in the film would be too much of a distraction for the audience.
“The hardest thing for me was to be like, ‘The moment that Taylor Swift walks onto the screen for about five minutes, nobody is going to be able to process anything,’” he explained, revealing his regret.
”I kick myself for it too, because I was like, ‘Wow, I could have been, like, hanging out with Taylor Swift and maybe we could’ve been friends or something,” the filmmaker added. “And so, I sort of feel like, ugh, I had sort of cost myself a chance to hang out with Taylor Swift and she must’ve just been like, ‘Who is this jerk who would say no?’”
Still, Weitz felt like he made the right call. “But sometimes you make decisions and you go, ‘This is for the best of the film,’” he concluded.
Had Swift gotten a part in New Moon, it would have marked her second movie with then-boyfriend Taylor Lautner in less than a year. She and Lautner, 30 — who portrayed Jacob Black throughout the Twilight franchise — dated in the fall of 2009, right around the November release of New Moon. While they called it quits that December, Taylor Squared shippers still got to see their favorite couple in an (onscreen) relationship when Valentine’s Day was released in February 2010.
Though she ultimately wasn’t cast in any of the Twilight movies, the Grammy winner didn’t let that slow down her acting career, later appearing in 2014’s The Giver and 2019’s Cats, in addition to releasing an entire catalog of award-winning and critically-acclaimed albums.
