{"id":285445,"date":"2026-02-07T09:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T09:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285445\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T09:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T09:23:09","slug":"how-a-joke-led-to-domhnall-gleeson-cillian-murphy-and-graham-norton-starring-in-taylor-swifts-new-music-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/285445\/","title":{"rendered":"How a joke led to Domhnall Gleeson, Cillian Murphy and Graham Norton starring in Taylor Swift\u2019s new music video"},"content":{"rendered":"

The video for the US pop star\u2019s song Opalite was released on the Apple Music and Spotify streaming platforms yesterday.<\/p>\n

Rumours of Gleeson\u2019s participation in the project began after pictures of promotional billboards for the track appeared on social media a few hours before its release.<\/p>\n

In the almost six-minute video, which Swift directed, she and Gleeson play love interests dubbed \u201clonely woman\u201d and \u201clonely man\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Domhnall<\/p>\n

Domhnall Gleeson. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n

Before the release, the singer\u2019s legion of fans had circulated a clip of the pair appearing together with Oscar-\u00adwinning Cork actor Murphy on The Graham Norton Show in October.<\/p>\n

During their interview, Swift complimented Gleeson\u2019s performance in the sitcom The Paper, saying she \u201cloved\u201d the show.<\/p>\n

Murphy then joked: \u201cIt\u2019s worth watching for Domhnall\u2019s dancing alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gleeson replied: \u201cI\u2019m hoping to get into a Taylor Swift music video.\u201d<\/p>\n

This elicited a surprised look from the US singer.<\/p>\n

In the video, talk-show host Norton plays a salesman, with Murphy appearing on billboards and advertisements and providing a voiceover.<\/p>\n

Clips from The Graham Norton Show feature at the end of the video, including the exchange between Swift, Gleeson and Murphy.<\/p>\n

The other guests on the episode \u2013 actors Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith, and Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi \u2013 also appear in the music video.<\/p>\n

\"Cillian<\/p>\n

Cillian Murphy. Photo: WireImage<\/p>\n

Writing on X, Swift explained that Irish actor Gleeson had \u201cmade a light-hearted joke about wanting to be in one of my music videos\u201d while on the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s Irish! He was joking!\u201d she wrote \u2013 but it led her to be \u201cinstantly struck with an idea\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike a school group project but for adults and it isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Swift said she \u201cgot ridiculously lucky with the group I was paired with\u201d and they were \u201call people whose work I\u2019ve admired from afar\u201d.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The video for the US pop star\u2019s song Opalite was released on the Apple Music and Spotify streaming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2920,93,30387,61,60,6543],"class_list":["post-285445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-cillian-murphy","tag-entertainment","tag-graham-norton","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-taylor-swift"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}