Taylor Swift‘s fingerprints were all over Matthew Vaughn’s February film Argylle — and her three cats‘ paw prints are definitely in the mix, too.
In a new Hollywood Reporter story examining Hollywood’s recent surge in cat content, the director revealed that one of the highlights of his 2024 mystery thriller — the inclusion of a kitty sidekick named Alfie, whom Bryce Dallas Howard’s character carries around in a pet backpack — was directly inspired by the pop star’s affinity for felines. Specifically, it borrows from a scene in Swift’s Netflix documentary Miss Americana, which shows the singer wearing a similar backpack containing her Scottish Fold, Olivia.
“I saw a Taylor Swift documentary where she has her cat in a cat-pack and I remember thinking it was a crazy image,” Vaughn told THR, which is a sister publication to Billboard.
According to the filmmaker, an earlier version of Argylle‘s script had Howard’s Elly Conway leave Alfie behind, as a spy played by Sam Rockwell whisks her away into a world of violence and espionage. But Vaughn changed his mind, and the little cat ended up being one of the movie’s big selling points.
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“I thought having the three of them going on an adventure together would be fantastic,” he added. “I was nervous about it being a cat, because cats aren’t exactly the most trainable animal.”
The article — aptly titled “Cats Are Finally Having a Big Hollywood Meow-Ment” — also credits Swift as giving the creatures a popularity boost with her own love of cats. The 14-time Grammy winner is also cat mom to kitties Meredith and Benjamin, posing with the latter on the cover of Time for her December Person of the Year interview.
It’s only fitting that Swift played a small part in influencing Argylle, considering how many people suspected she secretly authored the real life Elly Conway’s book of the same name, which the film was based off of. Shortly before the flick hit theaters, though, Vaughn confirmed that it wasn’t the case.
Howard, however, revealed around the same time that she definitely had Swift in mind as she was shaping her performance. “She is a cat lady,” the actress said on The Graham Norton Show in January. “She’s got this awesome backpack with a cat in [it] that she walks around with. She loves a good argyle sweater, and there is a sort of unapologetic dorkiness about her. That’s a little bit like what my character is like.”