Todrick Hall sat down for a lengthy interview with Access Hollywood about how Taylor Swift’s “You Need To Calm Down” video came together and how his career as a multi-talent dancer, choreographer, and singer happened..
“It felt like we were just two friends brainstorming who we were going to put on a skit with, which happens to me often,” said Todrick of collaborating on the video, which calls out anti-LGBTQ haters.
WATCH THIS: Taylor Swift’s ‘You Need To Calm Down’ Video Lights Up a Trailer Park with 21+ LGBTQ Icons: WATCH
Added Todrick: “I’m friends with everybody who was in this video so this was the most fun, and Taylor said this as well, ‘this is the most fun I’ve ever had on any set in any video in my entire career.’ In fact, the people from her team were like, ‘Todrick, can you get Taylor to come back to our trailer for hair and makeup’ because she didn’t want to leave the drag queens. She was hanging out in the room with the drag queens all day.”
Todrick also talked about Swift’s recent LGBTQ activism: “I have never seen her so excited as she is when she’s posting things and seeing her fans go and vote and retweet and sign these petitions…I do think there was a point years ago when this [political activism] would have been scary for her.”
Of the “Happy Meal moment” when Swift and Katy Perry got together, Todrick added: “I thought it was a great idea … all of her albums it really represents what she’s going through at that time. I’m so able they’re able to bury the hatchet. I know it was very important for them for it to be real if they were going to do it on camera.”
WATCH THIS TOO: Todrick’s ‘Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels’ Has More Fierce Men Dancing in Stilettos Than You’ve Ever Seen: WATCH
Todrick also talked about his days as a contestant on American Idol, and his earlier days as a male cheerleader in high school: “I remember getting out of my mom’s car and inhaling really big and being like, ‘this is going to be a really scary thing for you because people are going to make fun of you, people are going to judge you’ and having to be brave enough to walk into school and have people look at me and be the only male cheerleader. And I was an openly gay black man at 14 years old and it was not a cool thing to do at that time. I’m just so grateful that the world is progressing.”
