"The sensation of watching the video is a bit like the end of The Wizard of Oz: I've seen all these people together somewhere before. What's going on here? It's not until the song's bridge, when Graham Norton pops up, that suddenly it became clear that these people have been together before on his very couch back in October. In a '90s-themed video set to one of The Life of a Showgirl ' s danciest bops,"
"Written and directed by Swift, the "Opalite" video stars Swift and Gleeson as "Lonely Woman" and "Lonely Man," respectively, both of whom have taken up friendships with inanimate objects (she has a rock; he has a cactus). I know what you're wondering: Is Swift wearing a wig? Yes, of course. How else would we know this is a character? Here, she has mid-length brown hair and bangs, and I'm deciding not to take it personally."
"Here's where Turner-Smith come in. She plays a Jane Fonda-inspired home-workout instructor, and Lee is a singer on MTV, shown at the bar Swift visits with her pet rock. It's only after seeing a commercial (or as they say in the U.K., "advert") for Opalite, imagined here as an infomercial fix-all spray, that the two begin to consider that life could be bigger and better than they originally thought."
Taylor Swift released the second Showgirl-era music video on February 6 for "Opalite," the second single from her October 2025 album. The '90s-themed video features Graham Norton, Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lewis Capaldi, and Cillian Murphy. Swift wrote and directed the video and stars with Gleeson as Lonely Woman and Lonely Man, who maintain friendships with inanimate objects—a rock and a cactus. Turner-Smith appears as a Jane Fonda–inspired home-workout instructor; Lee appears as a singer on MTV. A commercial for the fictional Opalite spray prompts the Lonely Woman to spritz herself and suddenly appear in the Lonely Man's living room, where they begin a tentative friendship.
Read at Vulture
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]