Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriend Taylor Lautner, the rumored subject of “Back to December,” opened up about one big regret he has from his time dating her. The comments, which he shared on his and his wife Taylor Dome’s podcast The Squeeze this week, mark one of the first times Lautner has publicly spoken about Swift and their brief romance in 2009.
Dome asked Lautner if he could go back to one moment in his life, which would he choose. He picked one of the most infamous moments of Swift’s career. “Probably the 2009 VMAs [in August 2009], when I presented the award to Taylor and was unaware that the Kanye [West] thing was not a skit,” he said, referring to when West interrupted Swift on stage during her acceptance speech for Best Female Video.
Taylor Lautner hugging Taylor Swift on stage after giving her her award at the 2009 VMAs
“I’m deceased,” his wife said. “You and Taylor had just gone public or whatever.”
“And I present the award to her, so I gave her the award,” Lautner recalled. “I took five steps back and was standing five feet behind her. And yeah, in the middle of her giving her thank you speech, Kanye jumps up onto the stage.”
“I can barely hear it,” Lautner continued. “I can’t see them. I’m just assuming that this whole thing was a practiced and rehearsed skit because why else would Kanye West be jumping up on the stage, interrupting Taylor Swift? It just didn’t make sense. And if you look back at it, I’m actually caught like, laughing like giggling at them. I’m like, ‘I can’t hear them, but this is probably really funny right now.’ He jumped off, she finished. The second she turned back around and I saw her face for the first time, I was like, ‘Oh. [That wasn’t a skit.] No, that wasn’t good.’”
In August 2019, Swift herself shared her diary entry about the night of the VMAs. “Ahh… the things that can change in a week…Let’s just say, if you had told me Kanye West would have been the number one focus of my week, the media, and my part in the VMAs I would’ve looked at you crossed eyed,” she wrote. “And if you had told me that one of the biggest stars in music was going to jump up onstage and announce that he thought I shouldn’t have won on live television, I would’ve said ‘That stuff doesn’t really happen in real life.’ Well… apparently…. It does.”
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Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.