Emily Ratajkowski is getting candid on why she couldn't shake off that awkward Taylor Swift interview.

Two months after calling out Ellen DeGeneres over a resurfaced 2012 interview with the "Lavender Haze" singer in which she looks visibly uncomfortable, the model is setting the record straight on why she chose to speak up.

"I recently became a Swiftie," Emily told Elle for their April 2023 Impact Issue. "I loved her last album and I've seen her documentary, but I wasn't following her career in the same way the last 10-plus years. Watching that [interview], I was so struck by how clear she's being about what is making her uncomfortable."

The High Low With Emrata podcast host noted it's all about perspective and from then to now, her view of the interview—which saw Taylor grilled over her dating life—would have definitely changed.

"I think the lens that I would've viewed that interview from 10 years ago versus now has evolved so much, which is why it struck me," the 31-year-old continued. "I was in bed falling asleep and commented on it, not because I thought it was going to make headlines at all."

And Emily notes that this interview pattern extends far beyond Taylor.

As she explained, the interview is "another example of a woman who has been faced with such blatant misogyny and sexism, and yet we don't want to admit that, because she's powerful and successful, and also she's white."

As for the video in question? The two-minute TikTok features a split screen from two different Taylor Interviews. The top panel, from her 2019 interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe sees the "Anti-Hero" singer recount interviews from earlier in her career focusing exclusively on her love life.

"When I was like 23, people were just kind of reducing me to—kind of making slideshows of my dating life and putting people in there that I'd sat next to at a party once and deciding that my songwriting was like a trick," the Grammy winner shared. "Rather than a skill and a craft."

That clip was then stitched together with the Ellen DeGeneres Show interview, in which the host showed images of several men—Taylor Lautner, Justin Bieber, Joe Jonas and Justin Timberlake—and asked Taylor to ring a bell when a photo landed on one of her famous exes.

And the "All Too Well" singer expresses her disinterest in the game as Ellen—who ended the show in 2022, two years after facing allegations of a toxic workplace—egged her on.

"Stop it, stop it, stop! This makes me feel so bad about myself," Taylor said in the clip. "Every time I come up here, you put a different dude up there on the screen, and it just makes me really question what I stand for as a human being."

Emily commented on the Jan. 5 video, "This is so f–-ked up. She's literally begging her to stop."

Tinx also chimed in with her two cents, writing, "Unbelievable."

 

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