Jake Gyllenhaal hasn addressed the hype about his implications in “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” as well as the 10-minute version.
The actor briefly expressed his thoughts on the ballad, cut to five minutes on Swift’s first release of “Red” back in 2012.
“It has nothing to do with me. It’s about her relationship with her fans,” Gyllenhaal told Esquire in an interview published Thursday.
“It is her expression. Artists tap into personal experiences for inspiration,” he added. “And I don’t begrudge anyone that.”
When Swift re-recorded “Red” as a part of her mission to own all of her masters, which were sold by Scooter Braun without her approval, she released the original version of “All Too Well,” which resulted in a whopping 10 minutes — fortunately recorded when Swift went in the studio that fateful day to play around and get her feelings out in the wake of the end of her three-month relationship with the older actor.
Gyllenhaal told the magazine that he has not listened to “Red (Taylor’s Version)” which came out November 12, 2021, but he did turn off his Instagram comments around that time.
Fans of Swift unleashed their fury on Gyllenhaal throughout social media upon the release of the 10-minute version of the song, as well as the accompanying short film that Swift directed — starring Dylan O’Brien as the love interest and Sadie Sink as younger Taylor Swift.
“At some point, I think it’s important when supporters get unruly that we feel a responsibility to have them be civil and not allow for cyberbullying in one’s name,” he noted. “That begs for a deeper philosophical question. Not about any individual, per se, but a conversation that allows us to examine how we can—or should, even—take responsibility for what we put into the world, our contributions into the world.”
“My question is: Is this our future? Is anger and divisiveness our future?” Gyllenhaal continued. “Or can we be empowered and empower others while simultaneously putting empathy and civility into the dominant conversation? That’s the discussion we should be having.”
Dionne Warwick weighed in about the song’s saga on Twitter, addressing one of the key symbols in the lyrics that ties the ballad to Gyllenhaal: the scarf.
The 80-year-old musician tweeted, “If that young man has Taylor’s scarf he should return it,” the 80-year-old music legend tweeted. “It does not belong to you. Box it up and I will pay the cost of postage, Jake.”