Upon dropping her new “Lavender Haze” music video, Taylor Swift raved about her costar Laith Ashley. And in a couple tweets following the video’s premiere, Ashley is returning the favor by gushing about his experience with the 33-year-old pop star.
“Thank you so much @taylorswift13 for allowing me to play a small part in your story,” he tweeted early Friday morning (Jan. 27), 20 minutes after the “Lavender Haze” video premiered. “You are brilliant and this is an experience I will never forget.”
Then, a few hours afterward, the history-making transgender model tweeted: “Still at a loss for words. Trying to gather myself and my thoughts. I am so grateful. Thank you @taylorswift13.”
Ashley stars as Swift’s leading man in the “Lavender Haze” visual, self-directed by the 11-time Grammy winner in partnership with her All Too Well: The Short Film collaborator Rina Yang. Playing her romantic interest in the video, he lies next to Swift in bed, asleep as she traces galactic skies printed on his back, and cozies up to her at a house party.
After the project went live on Swift’s YouTube channel, she shared some photos from the video shoot — including one of her watching footage back on a handheld monitor with Ashley — and shouted out the Dominican-American singer by name on Instagram. “The Lavender Haze video is out now,” she wrote in her caption. “There is lots of lavender. There is lots of haze. There is my incredible costar @laith_ashley who I absolutely adored working with.”
“This was the first video I wrote out of the 3 that have been released, and this one really helped me conceptualize the world and mood of Midnights, like a sultry sleepless 70’s fever dream,” she added. “Hope you like it.”
See Laith Ashley and Taylor Swift’s posts about working together on “Lavender Haze” below.