How Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” Wound Up in ‘The Fall Guy’

There’s nothing like a record-breaking double-album drop to reinforce the all-encompassing nature of Taylor Swift. Roughly six hours after unleashing The Tortured Poets Department’s 31 songs unto the world, the power of Swift compels producer Kelly McCormick to admit to being “a little nervous—I’m not going to lie, Savannah,” she says, before reminding me, “It’s a big deal to talk about Taylor Swift.”

It’s also a momentous occasion when one sings a Swift track onscreen. Just ask Ryan Gosling, who in his new action comedy The Fall Guy reckons with a recent split by singing the devastating words of Swift’s 2012 barn burner of a breakup song, “All Too Well.” Gosling plays stunt performer Colt Seavers, who awkwardly reunites with Emily Blunt’s Jody Moreno—a woman he once ghosted—when he’s enlisted for her feature directorial debut. It’s been 18 months since the two last spoke, after Colt sustained a devastating injury to his back and effectively shut out the world, Jody included.

Following a tormented first day of filming together, Colt retreats to his car for a wallowing session to the tune Rolling Stone has named Swift’s best. Flashbacks of his relationship with Jody play as Swift croons, “Maybe we got lost in translation / Maybe I asked for too much / But maybe this thing was a masterpiece ’til you tore it all up / Running scared, I was there / I remember it all too well.” Jody catches her ex in the act and taps on the window. “Have you been crying to Taylor Swift?” she asks. “Doesn’t everyone?” he replies.

Colt downplays his heartache and Jody vows to forget their “fling-ette” in the name of professionalism, but the scene—and Swift’s song—makes clear the connection they once had. “We were at a test screening, and a major Swiftie raised her hand and said, ‘That was the perfect use of a Taylor cue. It was equally emotional and hilarious,’” McCormick says. “It was the biggest praise I’ve ever gotten. I mean, it was almost as amazing as Steven Spielberg saying he likes the film.”

Swift’s song almost didn’t make the movie—in fact, it was McCormick who convinced director David Leitch (who is also her husband) to try the track at all. “It was not written in, and when we were shooting, David had a Harry Nilsson song playing,” McCormick says. “But it felt a little melodramatic to me in a bad way.” As it turned out, Gosling felt the same. “What’s weird is Ryan and I sometimes think of the same things at similar times, and he said, ‘I wonder if we should try Taylor in that scene,’” says McCormick. “He knows that the love story is modern, fresh, messy, wild, real—all the things that Taylor evokes.”

When it came time to sell Leitch on the idea, McCormick pitched “All Too Well” as the quintessential “heartbreak anthem” to accompany Colt’s descent into regret. She met resistance—until she and Leitch attended Swift’s Eras tour in Las Vegas. “She sang the 10-minute version,” McCormick says. “David was blown away. The first time we dropped it in, we knew there was no going back, and we were going to be really upset if we couldn’t get it.” Securing the song would require Swift’s approval, as well as a fee that might turn out to be “prohibitive,” says the producer. “So it was very dangerous to fall so deeply in love at that point, but we did.”

McCormick credits the music department at NBCUniversal with brokering the deal. It had previously worked with Swift when she voiced Bombalurina and provided an original song for 2019’s Cats adaptation. “They weren’t concerned,” she says. “Taylor is actually really open to sharing her music with film. We showed her what we had cut, and there were no notes. Thankfully, she’s open to the process, and didn’t price herself so far out of our budget that we weren’t able to include her,” McCormick says, then repeats the key word for good measure. “Thankfully.”

Swift hasn’t been able to see the film just yet, but she’s publicly embraced Gosling’s association with what some believe to be her magnum opus. While recently hosting Saturday Night Live, Gosling sang a modified version of “All Too Well” to mark the end of his Barbie era—and at long last his breakup with the character of Ken. In his monologue, he sings alongside Blunt, “If I said that I was doing fine, you know I’d be lying / ’Cause I was just Ken and now I’m just Ryan.”

McCormick says that Gosling obtained Swift’s permission to sing to the tune of her song on SNL, but they “were all touched that she reposted” after the episode aired. Not only did Swift share Gosling’s performance—but lauded it. “Watch me accidentally catch myself singing this version on tour,” she wrote on Instagram. “This monologue is everything.”

McCormick has built her career on high-octane films like Atomic Blonde and Bullet Train, but says, “Sweeping romance is more my thing than all the action movies I make. To be able to have Ryan and Emily finding that sizzle—there were moments where I was just glowing as we were making it.” And now that she’s nabbed one Swift song for her films, she’s got her ears perked for possible follow-ups from The Tortured Poets Department. “I’m going to have to sit down and get a glass of wine—or maybe a bottle,” McCormick says, “and just listen.”