Last month, Taylor Swift dropped her delightful video for “Anti-Hero,” which included a comedy sketch featuring Mike Birbiglia, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia‘s Mary Elizabeth Ellis, and John Early as her future relatives. It was a fun moment, and now Birbiglia has revealed that when Swift first reached out to him about it, he figured there was a decent chance he was being catfished by somebody who wasn’t actually Swift.
In a Late Show interview last night (November 8), he told Stephen Colbert that he and Swift were first connected via mutual friend Jack Antonoff, who Birbiglia has known for a long time after initially meeting at Bonnaroo “about 15 years ago.” He continued, “It just so happened she was writing the music video the day that we happened to meet, and we were having pizza with Jack and a bunch of folks, and then she thought, ‘Oh, you…,’ apparently, in her mind, she thought, ‘This is the dystopic version, the nightmare version of what my son would be.’”
As for how they got in touch about the video, he said, “I got a text from her… I don’t know, a month or two later. […] I thought maybe I was just being catfished: It’s just a number. […] I just thought, it’s either Taylor Swift — that’d be cool — or it’s someone catfishing me who’s an excellent writer! Because she sent the script to the video that’s wonderful and very funny, and I thought, ‘This is fantastic. Either way, it’s sort of a win-win.’ I go, ‘Count me in, either Taylor Swift or a catfish person!’”
Check out Birbiglia’s Late Show interview below.