Photo: @taylorswift via Instagram
On February 6, Taylor Swift released her second music video of the Showgirl era for “Opalite,” the second single off her October 2025 album. 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, Swift recruited Norton, Domhnall Gleeson, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lewis Capaldi, and Oscar winner Cillian Murphy to populate the world of “Opalite.”
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. Neither the Lonely Woman nor Man is particularly happy with their arrangements, but what are they gonna do? Each takes their object around with them: to parties, to bars, to at-home workouts.
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. Swift’s Lonely Woman gives herself a spritz with the substance and suddenly winds up in the Lonely Man’s living room, and the two strike up a hesitant but sweet friendship (or more…?). Capaldi makes a cameo as a photographer at the mall where they go for a little friendship photo shoot, and Norton tends to an in-store display of Nope-alite, which undoes the magic of the substance. Murphy is both the face and voice of Opalite, narrating the opening commercial and making an appearance as the face of the product, which makes sense given the near-perfect quality of Murphy’s face. Swift’s dancers also make cameos here and there in the world of “Opalite,” but the stars of the show are Swift and her Norton couchmates. “I’m hoping to get into a Taylor Swift music video,” Gleeson joked back then. “The idea for the Opalite music video crash landed into my imagination when I was doing promo,” Swift wrote on Instagram.
I think with this video, specifically, we must all own up to the fact that Swift is getting really good at directing music videos. This one is slick and stylish and funny, avoiding the pitfalls of overdirected style over substance or being too cute. She once again worked with her regular cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto (who frequently works with Martin Scorsese), and shot this video on film. Does a Taylor Swift music video have to be shot on film? No, but what else is someone supposed to do with all that money? But here’s a new question: What other group of Graham Norton couchmates should make a music-video appearance together? Maybe we’ll see Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Ben Stiller, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in a Sombr video someday soon.
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