Sadie Sink Shares What Surprised Her About Working With Taylor Swift
She remembers it all too well.
Two-and-a-half years after the “All Too Well” music video came out, Sadie Sink is reflecting on what it was like to work with Taylor Swift on the project. In the 15-minute video, Sink acts alongside Dylan O’Brien, playing out the tumultuous relationship portrayed in the song. In an exclusive interview with Bustle, Sink shared how she got cast in All Too Well: The Short Film and why she was surprised by the final cut.
Sink recalled what it was like to get brought onto the project — apparently, she was hand-selected by Swift. “It was wildly confusing at first, because I never thought of myself as someone who would even reach her desk,” the Stranger Things actor explained. She was already “such a fan” of Swift’s music, and even used it sometimes to get into character for different roles.
“Looking back, I think she has some kind of Spidey sense where she’s just able to recognize someone who understands the assignment, because I knew that song so well and I knew the history behind it,” Sink explained. “How she was able to see that without even meeting me beforehand, and just offering it to me right off the bat… Well, she’s got good intuition.”
When the music video came out, Sink was “really scared” to see the final product — especially when she found out a moment of improv made the cut (when Sink and O’Brien’s characters argue in the kitchen). “When she told me she kept that scene, I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ It was completely on the fly; I don’t remember anything I said; we only did one take,” she said.
Apparently, Sink didn’t initially realize the actual dialogue would be recorded. “I remember they attached microphones to us, and I was like, ‘Why are they making us wear a mic?; I thought they were just capturing our mouths moving and we were going to visualize a fight in the kitchen [with music playing over it],” she said.
Though she didn’t expect to see — or hear — the argument, she appreciated how it turned out. “[W]hat’s so cool and realistic about it is that in a fight, it’s not supposed to be completely well thought-out. If you feel anger, your immediate response — if you can’t control it — is to start talking about what’s making you angry. It doesn’t have to be fully formed, coherent sentences,” she explained.
“You may say the same thing over and over, but that’s real, and that’s natural. You don’t see a lot of natural dialogue in films,” Sink continued. “So for her to allow us the space to improvise and interact in a way that we would if we were actually having a fight with our partner, just really served the song and the story well.”
Sink wasn’t wrong. The film went on to win the Grammy for best music video in 2023.
