For years, Swifties have argued over the possible inspiration for the one-time lover in the 33-year-old songwriters 2015 hit Wildest Dreams.
The song, which was featured on her blockbuster album 1989, features her begging a past lover to keep a memory of her alive even after their relationship has ended.
Shortly after the song broke out from the other hits on Taylor’s first full non-country album, fans singled in on one potential inspiration for the breakup song, though Taylor has never confirmed the real inspiration — if there is one.
Rumors of the star actor who may have inspired the song began swirling again earlier this month in response to a roundup of celebrity hookup gossip shared by DeuxMoi.
According to the gossip blog, Swifties were again sharing rumors that their idol wrote Wildest Dreams — which was co-written by Max Martin and Shellback — with the actor Alexander Skarsgård in mind.
The 47-year-old Swedish hunk’s connection to the songstress dates back to 2013, when they starred together in the adaptation of the popular young adult novel The Giver, which was released the following year.
The film, about a teenage boy who rebels against a dystopian society that has managed to eliminate emotions — both positive and negative — and historical memory, was lambasted by critics but grossed $67 million against a $25 million budget.
Jeff Bridges starred in the drama as the eponymous Giver, the one person in the future society who collects the memories and emotions of the past and eventually transfers them to Jonas (Brenton Thwaites).
Alexander was featured as the father of Jonas, while Taylor played Rosemary, the daughter of the Giver who previously tried to be the receptacle for his memories, only to become overwhelmed.
Filming took place in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa, around a year after her October 2012 breakup with Conor Kennedy, the son of independent presidential candidate and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
At the time, DailyMail.com published photos of Taylor dining out in South Africa with Alexander, as well as Katie Holmes, his on-screen wife in The Giver.
Alexander later said that he and Taylor had some ‘jam sessions’ during downtime off set, where they would ‘take turns and play the piano and sing,’ while he described the meetups as ‘really lovely.’
One of the earlier details about the subject of Wildest Dreams that Swifties latched on to was the location of the video that accompanied the single.
The video, which was set in the 1950s, featured Taylor at her most glamorous while appearing to shoot a movie in Africa, as she had literally done two years earlier.
The hitmaker also did herself up with dark brown hair in the music video, after the famous blonde sported a brunette wig while filming The Giver.
Even the video’s storyline seemed to confirm fans’ suspicious. Taylor’s Wildest Dreams actress is seen striking up a romance with her film-within-a-film costar Scott Eastwood, before they’re forced to part.
The superficial similarities between the video and the rumored romance were enough to convince many of Taylor’s most parasocial fans, but the lyrics also led some to believe that she and Alexander had a relationship.
One line references her object of obsession and describes him as ‘so tall and handsome as hell.’
Skarsgård is famous for his good looks, and he also happens to tower over most people thanks to his reported height of 6ft4in.
However, despite the clues that overzealous fans seized on, neither Taylor nor the Succession actor have confirmed (or even hinted at) a relationship.
After filming The Giver, Taylor went on to have a relationship with Harry Styles, while Alexander dated the British actress Alexa Chung.
More recently, the Shake It Off singer has been dating the Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Alexander has been more tight-lipped about his current relationship, but he has been partnered up with the Swedish actress Tuva Novotny, and the two welcomed a child together — his first and her third — in 2022.
Speculation about the rumored relationship was rampant after the release of the music video thanks to its supposed clues, but talk of Alexander as a one-time beau resurfaced in 2021 when Taylor released a rerecorded version of Wildest Dreams.
She had already begun releasing rerecorded versions of her previous albums (subtitled Taylor’s Version) which she intended to replace her original LPs after her nemesis, the talent manager and music executive Scooter Braun was involved in the purchase of her old label Big Machine, which gave him control of her master recordings.
The singer and actress claimed that she had tried for years to buy back her master recordings but had been rebuffed or only offered deals that would tie her to the label for years to come in order to slowly get her masters back.
She urged her fans to only purchase or stream her rerecorded versions of her catalogue going forward, so as to starve Big Machine and its new owners of the revenue they had counted on from the sale.
Taylor’s rerecorded version of 2014’s 1989 isn’t set to be released until October 27, but she had already recorded Wildest Dreams by 2021, and she decided to release that version in September of that year after fans clamored for it when it was used in the trailer for the animated film Spirit Untamed.
More recently, DeuxMoi recounted earlier in October that fans of the gossip blog had been buzzing about Taylor and Alexander’s alleged fling, amid a string of bevy of other rumored celebrity romances.
Although some of Taylor’s other breakup songs have much clearer inspirations, she rarely makes explicit statements about how the men she has dated have helped her to craft new songs, so it’s unlikely that Taylor will ever go into much detail about what led to the creation of Wildest Dreams.
