Over the past week, a controversial 2012 clip of Ellen Degeneres interviewing Taylor Swift resurfaced and went viral on social media, with thousands of fans (including famous names like Emily Ratajkowski) coming to Swift’s defense and criticizing Degeneres.
In the video (which was uploaded onto TikTok by user @thatnostalgicgirl) Degeneres introduced a game to her then-22-year-old Ellen Show guest Swift, in which the comedian displayed photos of men Swift had reportedly dated.
She then asked the singer to ring a bell to officially confirm her relationship with each man on the screen. Swift looked visibly upset and uncomfortable during the game, and begged Degeneres to end the segment. However, Degeneres proceeded, ignoring her pleas.
@thatnostalgicgirl in this interview she’s 100% describing being on the Ellen show #taylorswift #swiftie #k18results #taylorsversion #swiftok #theellendegeneresshow ♬ original sound – Ellen
Ellen Degeneres Slammed By Taylor Swift Fans After Controversial 2012 Interview Clip Resurfaces
“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Swift says to DeGeneres in the video. “This makes me feel so bad about myself. Every time I come up here, you put a different dude up on the screen. It just makes me really question what I stand for as a human being.”
“This is so f—d up,” Ratajkowski commented on TikTok after watching the footage, in which Swift repeatedly asked DeGeneres to stop the game, which included famous men such as John Mayer, Joe Jonas, Justin Timberlake, Zac Efron, Rob Lowe and more. Ratajkowski added, “She’s literally begging her to stop.”
“It was so humiliating what Ellen did this to her,” one fan commented under the TikTok post as another added, “Taylor saying “I don’t want to do it” should have been enough for Ellen to stop.” Someone else chimed in, writing, “she was about to cry and they just?? laughed at her????” as one other user pointed out, “A real irony that [Ellen] ended every show by saying ‘be kind to one another.'”
Taylor Swift had been quizzed about her love lifehttps://t.co/Kblv7HXIDR
— NME (@NME) January 9, 2023
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Interviewers reducing Swift to her personal and dating life rather than focusing on her musical and songwriting skills is “nothing new,” as another wrote, and this is something that the Grammy winner, 33, has discussed recently. In the same viral TikTok, the user who posted it included another clip from Swift’s 2019 interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.
While promoting her album Lover in the discussion, Swift reflected on coverage of her romantic partners as opposed to her music, and while she didn’t name Degeneres specifically, many fans thought she may have been referring to the infamous 2012 interview.
“When I was like 23, people were just kind of reducing me to — kind of making slideshows of my dating life and putting people in there that I’d sat next to at a party once and deciding that my songwriting was like a trick rather than a skill and a craft,” Swift told Lowe.”
The Midnights hitmaker added, “It’s a way to take a woman who is doing her job and succeeding at doing her job and making things, and it’s, in a way, it’s figuring out how to completely minimize that skill.”
