Emily Ratajkowski couldn’t shake off that uncomfortable Taylor Swift interview in 2012 by Ellen DeGeneres.
Two months after calling out the former talk show host over a 2012 interview with the Grammy winner in which she looked very awkward, the model is explaining why she decided to speak up.
She told Elle for their April 2023 Impact Issue, “I recently became a Swiftie. I loved her last album and I’ve seen her documentary, but I wasn’t following her career in the same way the last 10-plus years. Watching that [interview], I was so struck by how clear she’s being about what is making her uncomfortable.”
The 31-year-old actress explained, “I think the lens that I would’ve viewed that interview from 10 years ago versus now has evolved so much, which is why it struck me. I was in bed falling asleep and commented on it, not because I thought it was going to make headlines at all.”
Emily also noted that the pattern of the interview extends beyond the singer. According to her, the interview is “another example of a woman who has been faced with such blatant misogyny and sexism, and yet we don’t want to admit that, because she’s powerful and successful, and also she’s white.”
The two-minute TikTok video in question includes a split screen from two different interviews of the singer. The top panel features her interview with Zale Lowe of Apple Music in 2019, where she shares about the interviews she had in the past about her career which focused on her love life.
The singer shared, “When I was like 23, people were just kind of reducing me to — kind of making slideshows of my dating life and putting people in there that I’d sat next to at a party once and deciding that my songwriting was like a trick. Rather than a skill and a craft.”
The clip also featured her interview on the Ellen DeGeneres Show where the host showed images of different men. She gave Taylor a bell and instructed her to ring the bell if the photo showed her exes.
The “All Too Well” singer expressed her discomfort at the start of the “game.” She could be seen in the clip saying, “Stop it, stop it, stop! This makes me feel so bad about myself. Every time I come up here, you put a different dude up there on the screen, and it just makes me really question what I stand for as a human being.”
On January 5, Emily commented on the video, “This is so f–-ked up. She’s literally begging her to stop.”
The show ended in 2022 after receiving complaints of having a toxic work culture.
