The video for the US pop star’s song Opalite was released on the Apple Music and Spotify streaming platforms yesterday.
Rumours of Gleeson’s participation in the project began after pictures of promotional billboards for the track appeared on social media a few hours before its release.
In the almost six-minute video, which Swift directed, she and Gleeson play love interests dubbed “lonely woman” and “lonely man”.
Domhnall Gleeson. Photo: Getty
Before the release, the singer’s legion of fans had circulated a clip of the pair appearing together with Oscar-winning Cork actor Murphy on The Graham Norton Show in October.
During their interview, Swift complimented Gleeson’s performance in the sitcom The Paper, saying she “loved” the show.
Murphy then joked: “It’s worth watching for Domhnall’s dancing alone.”
Gleeson replied: “I’m hoping to get into a Taylor Swift music video.”
This elicited a surprised look from the US singer.
In the video, talk-show host Norton plays a salesman, with Murphy appearing on billboards and advertisements and providing a voiceover.
Clips from The Graham Norton Show feature at the end of the video, including the exchange between Swift, Gleeson and Murphy.
The other guests on the episode – actors Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith, and Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi – also appear in the music video.
Cillian Murphy. Photo: WireImage
Writing on X, Swift explained that Irish actor Gleeson had “made a light-hearted joke about wanting to be in one of my music videos” while on the show.
“He’s Irish! He was joking!” she wrote – but it led her to be “instantly struck with an idea”.
“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,” she wrote.
“Like a school group project but for adults and it isn’t mandatory. To my delight, everyone from the show made the effort to time travel back to the 90s with us and help with this video.
“The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo for The Life of a Showgirl. I was a guest on one of my favourite shows.”
Swift said she “got ridiculously lucky with the group I was paired with” and they were “all people whose work I’ve admired from afar”.
Opalite is the second single from the record-breaking album The Life of a Showgirl, which was released on October 3. The singer said she wrote it about her fiance, NFL player Travis Kelce, whose birthstone is opal.