Graham Norton 'Nicked' (And Then Almost Lost) Pivotal Prop From Taylor Swift Video
Graham Norton is lifting the lid on his surprise appearance in Taylor Swift’s latest music video.
Last week, the Irish presenter was unveiled as one of several celebrity cameos in Taylor’s Opalite video, which features all of the stars she shared the sofa with while appearing on The Graham Norton Show towards the end of last year.
The Grammy winner’s latest video centres around a product called Opalite that helps bring lonely people together, with Graham making a brief appearance as the salesman of an antidote called “Nope-alite”.
In the latest episode of his podcast Wanging On, Graham opened up about filming the Opalite music video, revealing he shot his parts in around November, just weeks after interviewing Taylor about her latest album The Life Of A Showgirl, at a shopping centre in Croydon.
“This I shouldn’t say, but I nicked my bottle of Nope-alite,” he then confessed. “I have it at home!
“And here’s the thing, we got a new cleaner. So, I had the bottle of Nope-alite in my office. And we got a new cleaner, and – phew! – when I came home, I found the empty bottle of Nope-alite in the bin! Because she thought, ‘this is just an empty bottle of cleaner’ and chucked it out!”
Graham also heaped praise on Taylor as a video director, insisting that “everyone” on set was “lovely”, making the experience a “really, really fun” one.
“In the bit that I was doing, in the shopping centre, there were lots of extras and things, and I just thought, ‘oh word is going to leak out that this is happening’... but no one joined all the dots and came up with ‘it’s everyone off The Graham Norton Show’,” he said.
However, it seems keeping the secret of his cameo wasn’t always the easiest task for Graham, finding himself at various points in the last few months pleading for her to “please release the video so I can tell someone I did this”.
Admitting he was “so in awe of myself” for managing to keep schtum, he admitted: “I came so close. On New Year’s Eve, I was with a gaggle of gays, and I just thought, ‘oh this is so good, it’ll be out in a minute, surely I can tell them?’.
“But I thought, ‘no, I mustn’t’, so I didn’t. So apologies to all the people I could have given this juicy bit of gossip to, and I didn’t, but I am available now and will sing like a canary.”
Joining Graham in the Opalite music video are actors Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee and Jodie Turner-Smith as well as singer Lewis Capaldi and a voice cameo from Cillian Murphy.
The release of the video means Opalite is currently on course to become Taylor’s sixth UK number one, after her new album’s lead single The Fate Of Ophelia topped the singles chart upon its release last year.