Taylor Swift Finds Love in New “Opalite” Video Starring Domnhall Gleeson

Taylor Swift has released a video for “Opalite,” the second song from The Life of a Showgirl to get a visual treatment. Directed by Swift herself, the ’90s-themed video—which is exclusive to Apple Music and Spotify until February 8—finds Swift in a dead-end relationship with a literal rock, only to be saved by a spritz of a spray potion called “Opalite” and the arrival of charmer Domnhall Gleeson. The two of them embark on a romantic adventure that occasions cameos from Cillian Murphy, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Lewis Capaldi—all of whom, a coda reveals, were Swift’s fellow guests when she appeared on the UK late-night TV show of Graham Norton (who also appears in the video). Watch it go down below.

Elaborating on the video on Instagram, Swift wrote, in part:

The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo for The Life of a Showgirl. I was a guest on one of my favorite shows, @TheGrahamNortonShowOfficial. For those of you who aren’t familiar, it’s a UK late night show where Graham Norton (the insanely charismatic and lovable host) invites a random group of actors, entertainers, musicians, etc to be on his show and we all sit there and chat like it’s a dinner party. They even serve wine. Anyway. I remember thinking I got ridiculously lucky with the group I was paired with. Cillian Murphy, Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee, @JodieSmith, and @LewisCapaldi. All people whose work I’ve admired from afar. When we were all talking during the broadcast, Domhnall made a light hearted joke about wanting to be in one of my music videos. He’s Irish! He was joking! Except that in that moment during the interview, I was instantly struck with an *idea*. And so a week later he received an email script I’d written for the Opalite video, where he was playing the starring role. I had this thought that it would be wild if all of our fellow guests on the Graham Norton show that night, including Graham himself, could be a part of it too. Like a school group project but for adults and it isn’t mandatory. To my delight, everyone from the show made the effort to time travel back to the 90’s with us and help with this video.

A YouTube upload will follow on Sunday, according to a countdown posted yesterday on Swift’s website (where Swift is selling an “Opalite” vinyl single for 48 hours). Swift’s decision to withhold the video from YouTube follows the platform’s recent decision to pull its stream counts from the Billboard charts, in protest of how Billboard weights ad-supported streams. Pitchfork has emailed YouTube for comment on this quirk of the “Opalite” rollout.

The first Life of a Showgirl video, for “The Fate of Ophelia,” was also written and directed by Swift herself and released, with the album, last October. Shortly afterwards, the album beat Adele’s first-week sales record and Swift was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.