Here’s every star who cameoed in the music video for Taylor Swift’s “You Need To Calm Down.” Over the past few years, pop star Taylor Swift has developed something of a habit for making cameo-studded videos. Back in 2014, the Joseph Khan directed video for “Bad Blood” featured a smorgasbord of famous faces from Hailee Steinfeld and Cindy Crawford to Jessica Alba and Zendaya. More recently, the video for “The Man” featured TikTok stars Loren Gray and Dominic Toliver alongside the voice of Dwayne Johnson and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from Swift’s dad Scott Swift.
In 2019 Taylor Swift released “You Need To Calm Down” – the second single from her seventh album Lover. A few days after the song’s release, the video premiered on Good Morning America and featured more cameos than “Bad Blood” or “The Man” combined. Released to coincide with Pride Month, “You Need To Calm Down” is both a celebration of the LGBTQ community and a takedown of Swift’s so-called haters.
Befittingly, many of the celebrities who appear in the music video are members of the LGBTQ community themselves, including former contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race and the hosts of Queer Eye. Read on for a complete list of every cameo in “You Need To Calm Down.”
- Katy Perry
- Adam Lambert
- Ellen DeGeneres
- Ryan Reynolds
- RuPaul
- Tatianna
- Trinity the Tuck
- Delta Work
- Trinity K. Bonet
- Jade Jolie
- Riley Knoxx
- Adore Delano
- A’Keria Chanel Davenport
- Billy Porter
- Todrick Hall
- Laverne Cox
- Chester Lockhart
- Tan France
- Antoni Porowski
- Karamo Brown
- Jonathan Van Ness
- Bobby Berk
- Jesse Tyler Ferguson
- Ciara
- Justin Mikita
- Hayley Kiyoko
- Adam Rippon
- Hannah Hart
- Dexter Mayfield
The video for “You Need To Calm Down” was co-directed by Taylor Swift and Drew Kirsch who purposefully planted lots of iconography and references relevant to the LGBTQ community within its frames. Alongside the video’s rainbow-colored palette, there’s also Ryan Reynolds' cameo as artist Norman Rockwell painting a scene of New York’s iconic gay bar The Stonewall Inn and a protest sign stating “Get A Brain Morans” – a deliberate misspelling that seemingly calls out anti same-sex marriage senator Jerry Moran.
The video for “You Need To Calm Down” wasn’t without its detractors, however. Some critics felt the premise of the song and video – that is, equating the online hate Taylor Swift has been on the receiving end of to the discrimination faced by members of the LGBTQ community – was rather tone deaf. Others felt “You Need To Calm Down” wasn’t an expression of Swift’s allyship with the LGBTQ community but rather a crude marketing ploy intended to cash in on Pride Month. Nevertheless, the video went on to win two awards at the 2019 MTV Music Video Awards – Video of the Year and Video for Good.