Taylor Swift Spills Secrets of Filming Cats Movie: 'I Had More Fun Than Anyone Else'
Taylor Swift has never been one to shy away for her affection for cats — especially her two Scottish fold felines, Olivia Benson and Meredith Grey, and their new little brother Benjamin Button.
So it shouldn’t come as much surprise to hear the Grammy-winning singer was living her best life as she prepared to play Bombalurina in the upcoming film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s acclaimed musical Cats.
“I had much more fun than anyone else,” Swift, 29, revealed during an appearance to Friday’s The Graham Norton Show alongside Sophie Turner, Michael Fassbender, Jessica Chastain, and James McAvoy (the four of whom were promoting their latest X-Men movie, Dark Phoenix).
“I had to go to cat school to learn how to move and behave,” Swift said, of filming. “I was meant to go for three days and I stayed for four months!”
This isn’t the first time one of Cats‘ famous faces have spilled secrets about making the movie.
Rebel Wilson — who stars in Cats with Swift and a slew of famous faces including James Corden, Jennifer Hudson, Jason Derulo, Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench — opened up about the experience back in February, during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
“We did have to go to cat school, which is where we all pretend to be cats together,” she said. “We have a lady called Sarah who teaches us.”
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Wilson also spoke to Entertainment Tonight in February about working with Swift. “She’s incredible. She’s such a lovely girl and I personally think her cat is the sexiest out of all cats,” Wilson said.
“I’m a different kind of cat,” the actress, 39, jokes. “I’m not a sexy Catwoman. I’m doing the middle-aged lazy cat in the movie.”
Elba also praised Swift. “Taylor was great,” the English actor, 46, told Variety in March. “Her and I had a lot of work to do together, and she was amazing. She worked hard and was just happy to be there.”
Swift seemed to love her Cats costars just as much. In February, she surprised them with sweet gifts, which ballet dancer Eric Underwood shared on his Instagram Stories.
“When you come home from work with gifts! Thank you to the INCREDIBLE @taylorswift,” Underwood wrote while sharing a photo of some merchandise from Swift’s reputation tour. Actor Redmand Rance also showed off his jam-packed bag of merch on Instagram, writing “When @taylorswift gets the whole cast gift bags.”
Cats, which filmed in London, hits theaters Dec. 20.
The movie will be helmed by Tom Hooper, who directed the hit movie adaptation of Les Miserables in 2012. Wilson teased to PEOPLE the “brand new technology that no one has ever seen before” that Hooper used to bring his cats to life.
As had previously been revealed by Universal, Hooper went with motion-capture technology as James Cameron did in Avatar to transform his cast into singing felines. And to make the actors appear the size of actual cats, the film’s sets were oversized — think Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Elsewhere on The Graham Norton Show, Swift performed her new song “ME!” and opened up about her new album, saying “ME!” reflects the sound of the record “because I am in a much better mood now.”
As for its still-undisclosed name? “I like to tease my fans, and some have definitely worked out the name, and it’s my fault as I’ve given lots of clues, but I can’t change my mind now,” Swift says.
She dropped another in a Friday interview with The Independent, sharing that when it comes to the album title’s appearance in the “ME!” music video, “I think you see it once and you hear it twice.”
The Graham Norton Show airs Friday (10.35 p.m.) on BBC One.
