Taylor Swift admits Cats was a 'weird-ass movie'

Cats currently has a 20 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes
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Margaret Abrams22 January 2020

In a new Variety interview, Taylor Swift opens up about her role in Cats and the film as a whole, calling it a "weird-ass movie."

Cats currently has a 20 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the critics' consensus reads "Despite its fur-midable cast, this Cats adaptation is a clawful mistake that will leave most viewers begging to be put out of their mew-sery."

But it doesn't seem like Swift thinks it's a "clawful mistake."

In the interview, Swift said, "I’m happy to be here, happy to be nominated, and I had a really great time working on that weird-ass movie. I’m not gonna retroactively decide that it wasn’t the best experience. I never would have met Andrew Lloyd Webber or gotten to see how he works, and now he’s my buddy. I got to work with the sickest dancers and performers. No complaints."

Mary Ellen Matthews/Variety Magazine

She's not the first Cats star to admit the movie missed its mark. The Late Late Show host and Cats actor James Corden said, “I haven’t seen it, I’ve heard it’s terrible" in December. It's unclear if he's since seen the film.

Actress Francesca Hayward was Victoria in the movie and a bit more positive about the film. "It takes time maybe, for people to wrap their heads around the whole thing. Maybe they are comments from people who haven’t seen the musical," she told Evening Standard Online.

Many people walked out during the movie and Evening Standard's reviewer David Sexton called it "nearly as obscene as The Human Centipede." One critic at The Telegraph wrote, "The only realistic way to fix Cats would be to spay it."

Mary Ellen Matthews/Variety Magazine

Swift, 30 also spoke to Variety about her new documentary, the Netflix-produced Taylor Swift: Miss Americana.

The film is premiering at Sundance and discusses her decision to become more political in her music.

Mary Ellen Matthews/Variety Magazine

In the documentary, she also opens up about her mother, Andrea Swift, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor after battling cancer.

Her mother's illness is also why she's performing a more limited concert run for Lover and mostly playing festivals. "I mean, we don’t know what is going to happen. We don’t know what treatment we’re going to choose. It just was the decision to make at the time, for right now, for what’s going on," she said.

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