Josh Charles is singing Taylor Swift‘s praises. During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the 52-year-old actor gushed over Swift after appearing in her “Fortnight” music video.
“She’s an incredible director,” Charles said. “My favorite kind of director because she knows what she wants. When she’s got it, we moved on. She knows what she wants, when she’s got it, she’s got it.”
“I will say this, I was already a fan of her music, but if any of you ever get to meet her, your fandom of her will just go up through the roof,” he added. “She’s just such a genuine, cool, approachable person. That’s nice to see, because that’s not always the case. That was really exciting.”
When Charles’ Dead Poets Society co-star, Ethan Hawke, revealed that Swift wanted them for her music video, the actor didn’t initially believe his longtime pal.
“It was a really strange thing,” Charles said. “Taylor knows Ethan’s daughter, Maya [Hawke], and reached out to her. The title of the album, obviously, The Tortured Poets Department, and so I think it’s a little tip of the cap to Dead Poets Society, other tortured poets. She probably had this idea that it’d be interesting for us to be in the video.”
“She reached out to Ethan and Ethan reached out to me. Once I got over thinking he was punking me… When he first called me I was like, ‘Are you bulls**tting me right now? ‘Cause if you’re s**tting me right now…’ He was like, ‘This is dead serious,'” he continued. “I was like, ‘OK.’ We talked about it and I talked to her people and it just seemed like such a fun idea.”
It was a project that Charles and Hawke were barred from telling anyone about, which proved challenging for the men.
“We were sworn to secrecy and signed NDAs and all that stuff… I told my wife, my dad, maybe one or two other people that I knew [wouldn’t tell],” Charles said. “I didn’t tell my kids. I didn’t tell my kids because they’re just blabbermouths. They’ll talk about it at school. Finally, right before it aired, I did tell my son, because he’s so full of hot air. He makes up so much stuff I knew no one would believe him anyway.”
In an Instagram post about the experience, Charles further discussed his music video experience.
“I don’t like keeping secrets so that was hard. I didn’t even tell my kids until the other day!” he wrote alongside a pic of himself and Hawke. “Here’s a couple of tortured old poets about to board an early flight to be pop stars for a day. Been through a lot with this dude over the years, but safe to say this was a most memorable day.”
“We were treated with such class by Taylor and her crew from beginning to end,” Charles added. “What I’ll remember most was the laughter. There was a lot of it. Like we were 17 all over again.”
As for Hawke, during an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the actor opened up about keeping his appearance quiet from his kids.
“You tell my teenage daughters that I’m going to meet Taylor, and everybody at school’s gonna know,” he said. “When they did find out, the look on their face was one of profound disappointment.”
He joked that his daughters said, “Don’t pay attention to my dad. My dad’s an idiot. You should be calling me!”
Whether or not his daughters were onboard with his connection to Swift, Hawke said that he and Charles had the time of their lives on the “Fortnight” set, sharing, “We felt like the biggest rock stars in the world.”
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