In 55 years and 94 acting roles, Laura Dern has rarely missed. The OG nepo baby (her father, Bruce, and mother, Diane Ladd, are celebrated actors), Instagram savant, and muse to David Lynch is rightly beloved online. And as of 3 a.m. this morning, Dern can now lay claim to a new fandom in addition to devotees of Jurassic Park, Star Wars, and Twin Peaks: that of Taylor Swift(ies).
The singer tweeted a trailer for the music videos that accompany her new album, Midnights, explaining that they are “to explore visually the world of this record,” and ensuring Twitter stayed up another five hours laboriously screenshotting the footage. In the credits for the album, Dern is named alongside the likes of the Haim sisters and, intriguingly, Dita Von Teese.
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The sight of Dern’s name in the credits has led to a chorus of joy and mild hysteria at the two collaborating, which goes a bit like: Laura Dern?? Some have pointed out the potential Easter egg that Lana Del Rey, who appears on the album for only a handful of words, once covered the track “Blue Velvet,” a song which shares a name with the cult ’80s noir David Lynch film starring Dern. Happy coincidence or incredibly significant development, who can say? But to step back from the wall covered in red string for a moment…Laura Dern!
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Dern has been having a moment for her whole career, avoiding being typecast by playing a raft of complicated and beguiling women. In truth, her knack for reinvention onscreen has a distinctly Swiftian vibe to it. Who else could play the eternal matriarch in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and the firecracker divorce-lawyer-to-the-stars Laura Wasser in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story in the same year, picking up an Oscar for the latter?
Swift’s visual album credits don’t name any directors, but given the ongoing collaboration between director Paul Thomas Anderson and the Haim sisters (with Alana Haim leading Licorice Pizza, and the auteur directing the band’s music videos several times), it’s not beyond possibility that he could be directing a video in which they feature. Now let’s fully strap on the tinfoil hat and return to the wall of red string to connect these dots. Is it perhaps not a huge leap to think that Lynch could be directing his frequent collaborator Dern in the video where she appears?
Just leaving this here:
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This article first appeared on British
