Julia Roberts stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday to promote her new film, Leave The World Behind, but it was a different topic that she was seemingly most excited to discuss: Taylor Swift.
After playing a game of Box of Lies with Fallon, Roberts then sat down with the host for a chat that covered her first concert, her new movie and how the Obamas became its producers and, of course, her status as a self-proclaimed Swiftie.
“Hashtag superfan”
Fallon brought up an Instagram post from Roberts after she saw Swift in concert back in June, where the actress wrote, “@taylorswift I Love You. Thank you for being EVERYTHING WE EVER NEEDED! Ever.”
That’s when Roberts called herself a “hashtag superfan” and a Swiftie — the common term for fans of the pop star — and it turns out she has proof to back it up.
“My Spotify wrapped was embarrassing,” Roberts said of the end-of-year data summaries Spotify sends out to its users. “It was not like the cool, ‘let me share this with all my friends,’ it was like a, ‘I figured as much.’”
Then Fallon, who’s a Swiftie himself, pulled out a photo of Roberts on stage with Swift and Joan Baez at a Swift concert in 2015.
Roberts explained in an extended clip on the Tonight Show’s YouTube page that she took her kids — roughly aged 10 and 8 at the time — to their first big concert. And before the show Swift asked if Roberts wanted to go up and dance on stage with others, like Baez, during a certain part of the show.
Roberts said she wasn’t so sure because she tends to get nervous — and sweaty — but decided to do it after support from her 8-year-old and after changing into a Swift t-shirt because she was wearing the same outfit that she wore a few days before on The Ellen Degeneres Show.
“The whole thing was pretty surreal, and the Joan Baez part of it made it even more surreal,” Roberts said of the night.
Oscar-winning coincidence
The talk of Swift in concert was a natural segue for Fallon to ask Roberts what her first concert was.
“It’s so much cooler than my Spotify wrapped,” Roberts said before announcing that it was Cheap Trick, in what she described as a “sneak out of the house situation.”
Interestingly enough, another Oscar-winning actress, Julianne Moore, also revealed that her first concert was Cheap Trick one day earlier on Monday’s Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.
Fallon’s excitement
If there’s at least one fan of Roberts’ new apocalyptic thriller, Leave the World Behind, it’s clearly Fallon, who was very excited to discuss it.
The film’s producer and star Roberts, who’s joined by people like Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke and Kevin Bacon, plays the matriarch of a family in a luxurious vacation home who is visited by two strangers in the night with news of impending doom.
The film was written and directed by Sam Esmail, probably best known as the creator of Mr. Robot, and who also worked with Roberts on the Prime series, Homecoming.
Leave the World Behind is based on the 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, which was once recommended by former president Barack Obama, leading to he and his wife, Michelle becoming producers on the project as well.
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs on NBC.
