Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles appear in Taylor Swift's “Fortnite” music video
Screengrab/Republic Records
Ethan Hawke talks about how he ended up appearing in Taylor Swift's “Fortnite” music video.
The Wildcat director stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote the film starring his daughter Maya Hawke. Prior to their conversation about the project, the late night host asked Hawke about his experience working on a music video with his Dead Poets Society co-star and lifelong friend Josh Charles.
“Well, Stephen, I'm very popular. People seek me out. It just happens,” the multi-hyphenate joked to Stephen Colbert, adding: And I think she wanted to hide a little Easter egg about the Dead Poets Society in there. ”
He recalled walking through the airport with Charles and seeing all the young people wearing Swift's Ellas Tour merchandise and thinking, “There's something about them.”
“We're going to meet the Queen ourselves,” the Oscar nominee said. “Josh and I laughed silly all day long. We felt like we were the biggest rock stars in the world. Josh is different than me. We tried to look modest. Josh, Taylor's We got to camp and he was like, “Hey, do you have sushi?” “Oh, let's eat sushi here now.” I had the best sushi of my life. ”
Hawke explained that he signed a non-disclosure agreement when signing the music video, so he couldn't tell his two teenage daughters about his plans to meet. But when she found out, they were not happy.
“The truth is, when they found out, the look on their faces was one of deep disappointment,” he said, admitting that they said they felt the same way. My father is an idiot. you should call me. ” Taylor is theirs. I can't let them do that. So I had to keep it low key. ”
The “Fortnite” music video is the first to be released from Swift's latest album, The Tortured Poets Department. In the four-minute video, Swift and Post Malone play ex-lovers who find themselves continuing to be attracted to each other. Hawke and Charles appear midway through as two scientists who run tests on Swift's personality before Post Malone releases her.
After the release of the album, which broke several records, the two musicians praised each other. In a track-by-track experience on Amazon Music, Swift explained the meaning of several songs on Tortured Poets, including “Fortnite,” and said the album “represents a lot of common themes.” .
“One of them is fatalism – longing, impatience, lost dreams. I think this album is very fatalistic in that there are a lot of very dramatic lines about life and death. 'You 'I love you, it's ruining my life.' These are very pretentious and dramatic things to say, but that's the kind of album it is,” she said. “This is a traumatic, artistically tragic thing about love and loss.”Fortnite,” I always imagined it would take place in this American town, where you'd imagine The American dream that I had dreamed of never actually happened. You didn't end up with the person you love, so now you just have to live with that person every day. I just wrote from that perspective because it's a really tragic concept. ”