This past weekend, seemingly every Taylor Swift fan in America (besides me) flocked to a movie theater to check out the already-massive and award-nominated hit Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.
As someone who miraculously scored tickets to one of her sold-out concerts earlier this year, I wasn’t dying to re-experience her three-hour musical extravaganza on the silver screen just yet. Plus, the videos that emerged from various screenings were their own source of sidesplitting and somewhat staggering entertainment. There were Swifties doing what looked like Midsommar rituals in front of seats. Others looked like they were having some sort of religious experience. One Swiftie bolted out of a theater with a giant cardboard display for the movie like Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie.
All of these clips have prompted an onslaught of jokes and criticism, with Twitter (now called X) users decrying Swifties’ lack of theater etiquette. However, one video from The Eras Tour’s opening weekend, not about Swift’s main demographic of screaming young girls, has managed to thoroughly haunt me for three whole days: Taylor Lautner doing backflips and kick-ups for a gaggle of moviegoing, ostensible teens.
If you told me in 2009, that global heartthrob Taylor Lautner—aka Twilight’s leading werewolf Jacob Black—would be caught in 4K doing gymnastics at a screening for a film he has no direct involvement in, I would call bullshit. And yet, somehow, this is the current reality for the former teen idol, who’s been riding the “I briefly dated Taylor Swift in 2009” wave hard as of late. Where is it taking him exactly? I don’t know!
As a former teen who once had five images of Lautner (as in, five Twilight movie posters) in my bedroom at once, I often wonder what happened to the once-inescapable 31-year-old in the years since the sci-fi/fantasy franchise ended—particularly while his former co-stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have transformed themselves into indie darlings. His whereabouts since 2013 have been extremely random: He had a supporting role on Scream Queens right before it got canceled and was never to be seen in the Ryan Murphy Television Universe again. From 2014-2018, he had a starring role on a BBC Three sitcom called Cuckoo. He was also in Grown Ups 2 where he apparently impressed Kevin James and Adam Sandler enough to be cast in their 2022 movie Home Team.
I’m not listing these admittedly befuddling credits to be shady, like Tamra Judge scrolling through Heather Dubrow’s C-list IMDB page on Real Housewives of Orange County. (Maybe just a little.) But seriously, if I spent my adolescence being hounded by paparazzi and sexualized by grown-ass adults—and even falsely outed—I would probably do whatever the heck I wanted with the rest of my career. Lautner has even stated that, at one point, he felt “resentment” about his demanding schedule as a teen, which included a concerning amount of time in the gym. He also explained that he stepped away from acting briefly to attend to his mental health. Now, he and his wife, Taylor Dome Lautner, have a podcast called The Squeeze all about mental health awareness.
Still, watching Lautner repeatedly assert his place in the Taylor Swift Universe is both the strangest, funniest and thirstiest PR tactic I’ve witnessed from a public figure. It’s especially jarring because, whether Lautner knows it or not, he is arguably the least important ex-boyfriend in Swift’s 17-year mythology. Even Joe Jonas, who Swift dated for a few months while he was still donning a purity ring, has sparked more interesting soundbites and lyrics than Lautner and Swift’s nothingburger of a fling 14 years ago.
In 2010, Swift and the Twilight star famously played love interests in the rom-com Valentine’s Day (which no one has ever voluntarily watched since it hit theaters). Lautner also happened to be onstage when Kanye West interrupted Swift’s acceptance speech at 2009 VMAs. Swift playfully mentioned that she was “dating a werewolf from Twilight” in her “Monologue Song” when she hosted Saturday Night Live later that year. And the song “Back In December,” on her 2010 album Speak Now, where Swift regrets her abandonment of an ex-lover, is assumed to be about him. But that’s really where Lautner’s legacy in Swift’s universe ends prior to his recent antics.
For the record, Lautner and Swift (and Lautner’s spouse) are legitimate pals, and the “Cruel Summer” singer has fully embraced him during the promotion for Speak Now (TV). When the Lautners stopped by the Eras Tour in July—where he also funnily did a backflip onstage—Swift said that the couple had become her some of “closest friends.” She also cast Lautner in the music video for “I Can See You” (From The Vault) where he also performs some action-movie stunts. So I guess throwing his body around is just a thing he likes to do.
Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve seen enough of Lautner’s Swift-related antics or desperately want more. On the one hand, this level of enthusiasm around someone you dated more than a decade ago (and when you’re a whole husband to someone else) is strange, even if they are the most famous woman in the world. On the other hand, he and his spouse have to get those subscriber numbers up somehow.
If Lautner has anything remotely as funny as doing Spider-Man stunts at an AMC up his sleeve, I’ll take one more cringe-inducing video.
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