For a fortnight, Taylor Swift’s new album The Tortured Poets Department, has been taking over the earwaves of the masses and going viral online with all the reactions. When the singer first unveiled her new era, she enlisted the help of Ethan Hawke and Josh Charles for two sneaky Dead Poets Society cameos, with the actors playing scientists in the black and white music video. Now that Hawke’s involvement in The Tortured Poets Department era is here, he has shared the story behind becoming involved.
Dead Poets Society is one of the best movies of the 1980s, and very much on brand with Taylor Swift’s new album, full of heartbreaking lyrics to quote. Here’s how the cameo came to be, per Ethan Hawke:
We got this call, Taylor’s releasing an album, The Tortured Poets Department, and I think she wanted to hide a little Easter egg about Dead Poets Society.
Hawke shared how he ended up in the “Fortnight” music video while guesting on a segment of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Ever since making the 1989 movie, alongside the late Robin Williams, he and Josh Charles have been friends for life. It sounds like they had an absolute blast together on the set of the video. As he continued:
You can’t imagine what it’s like to walk through an airport with a friend that you’ve known for 35 years, who you grew up with, and watch all the young people in the airport with their Eras sweatshirts on and their Taylor Swift things, and we got something on them, we’re going to meet the queen ourselves. For Josh and I, we laughed ourselves silly the whole day. We felt like the biggest rockstars in the whole world.
On the set of the video, Hawke also recalled Charles asking for sushi while they were there and proceeding to try the “best sushi” of his life. When Colbert asked whether he got to tell his two daughters about the experience prior to the music video’s release, he explained that he signed an NDA for a very understandable reason. In his words:
You tell my teenage daughters that I’m going to meet Taylor, and everybody at school’s gonna know.
While one might think it’d be a dream for Hawke’s daughters to then find out that their dad was in a Taylor Swift music video, that’s not the response he received. As he explained it:
And I’ll tell you, the truth is, when they did find out, the look on their face was one of profound disappointment. They want to be friends [with her,] ‘Don’t pay attention to my dad, my dad’s an idiot. You should be calling me.’ Taylor belongs to them, I can’t have that one.
Ethan Hawke has four kids, his eldest being 25-year-old Maya Hawke, who has become an actor in her own right with a growing list of movies and TV shows to her name. Along with Maya, he shares his son Levon with ex-wife Uma Thurman. Hawke also has a 15-year-old and 12-year-old daughter, Clementine and Indiana, with his current wife Ryan Shawhughes.
As he shared on the late night show, his two youngest daughters were actually quite disappointed in Taylor Swift for having their father cameo in the music video. Mostly because they wanted it to be them. Sometimes you just can’t win as a parent, I guess. Their reactions are rather hilarious though! Check out the video:
You can check out what upcoming Taylor Swift music and more are coming up next here on CinemaBlend.