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If you can tell an actor is acting when you watch them on the screen then they’re probably not doing a great job. But if you couldn’t discern that Stranger Things star Sadie Sink had never really been in love despite certainly acting like it in Taylor Swift‘s All Too Well: The Short Film, then that’s because Sink did some deep-dive research to get into character as her half of the dysfunctional, age-gap relationship with actor Dylan O’Brien.
“At that point, I had never been in love,” Sink told Variety magazine about getting cast in the video as, basically, a stand-in for a 20-year-old Swift when she was dating actor Jake Gyllenhaal, then 29. “I had never been through a breakup that intense. It was all foreign territory for me. I had to rely on just my years of research as a Swiftie.”
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Sink said she connected to herself in a profound way — like many Swifties — through the singer’s confessional lyrics, especially the song’s biting kiss-off line, “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise.” In the break-up scene, as that lyric unfolds, Sink is shown curled in a ball on her bed weeping as her phone lights up in the nearly 15-minute mini-movie written and directed by Swift.
“As I was going, things from my personal life kind of came forward, which fueled it even more,” she said of the tricky actor’s task of trying to focus on what’s going on with their character rather than tapping into their own life experiences to find the right emotional tone for a scene. “Then I was like, ‘Whoa. Maybe I should do some work on Sadie in these areas.’”
While the now-22-year-old star didn’t go into detail on what that work entailed, she did note that she’s since cut “All Too Well” from her “wind-down song” playlist while working on the anticipated upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things. “It holds this incredibly nostalgic feeling for me now that I feel physically in my body,” she said as she wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s too intense.”
Sink talked about getting cast in the short film in Jan. 2023 with Seth Meyers, calling the process “bizarre.” The actress said she was already a fan when Swift’s team reached out to say the singer had her in mind for the role. “You would never think that our paths would really cross, someone being in the music industry and then in the film industry,” Sink said of the “trippiest” offer she’s had to date. “It was like two different worlds. It was kind of a bizarre mashup, but everyone was very excited.”
Watch All Too Well: The Short Film below.
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Ryan Reynolds knows when not to rock the boat. The IF co-star and Wrexham A.F.C. co-owner popped into The Today Show on Monday morning (May 13) to talk about his role in actor/director John Krasinski’s new animated movie about imaginary friends, as well as to spill some details on one of the most-burning questions in Hollywood: what did he and wife Blake Lively name their fourth child?
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The couple have made a habit of keeping their kids’ faces (and names) out of the public eye, but speaking to Today co-hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, Reynolds joked that the only person who might know the baby’s name is the world’s biggest pop star. Guthrie practically begged Reynolds to cough up the name, asking him, “Taylor Swift keeps dropping it into lyrics… is the fourth child’s name, the baby’s name, anywhere on the record?”
That record, of course, is Swift’s mega-selling The Tortured Poets Department, and Reynolds — legendary for his desert-dry wit and dead-pan jokes — quickly responded, “We always wait for Taylor to tell us what the child’s name will be. And we’ll say this: we’re still waiting.”
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Teasing that Swift is clearly a prolific writer, Reynolds channeled mock panic as he said, “what are we doing here?”
Jokes aside, Reynolds has good reason to await Swift’s blessing, as the singer previously unveiled her A-list pals’ other three children’s names in the song “Betty” from 2020’s Grammy-winning Folklore album. That song name-checks the couple’s third child in the title, daughter Betty, four-and-a-half, in addition to older sisters Inez, seven-and-a-half and James, nine.
Last year, at a May stop on her Eras Tour in Philadelphia, Swift shouted out the couple’s first-born trio while performing “All Too Well” at Philly’s Lincoln Financial Field. Lively and Reynolds welcomed their fourth in Feb. 2023, but have not discussed the baby’s name to date.
Check out the Today show clip below.
Ryan Reynolds jokes on TODAY about the name of his and Blake Lively’s fourth child: “We always wait for Taylor (Swift) to tell us what the child’s name will be. And, we’ll say this: we’re still waiting.” pic.twitter.com/CimgAjffOM— TODAY (@TODAYshow) May 13, 2024
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