Bryce Dallas Howard Addresses Taylor Swift ‘Argylle’ Rumors on ‘Fallon’

Bryce Dallas Howard appeared on The Tonight Show to promote her new film Argylle and host Jimmy Fallon took the opportunity to question her on whether Taylor Swift actually wrote the novel on which the film is based.

In the movie, directed by Matthew Vaughn, Howard plays an author named Elly Conway, which is also the pen name of the book’s actual author. Many Swifties have supposed that Swift herself is Conway, pointing to a series of uncanny connections between the film and the singer. On the show, Fallon laid out several of these connections, including the cat backpack worn by Howard in the movie, which looks almost exactly like one worn by Swift in Miss Americana. “So what’s up?” Fallon asked.

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“So, yeah, let me debunk that right now,” Howard replied. “Matthew saw this image [of the cat backpack] and was like, ‘That needs to be in a movie. This situation needs to be in a movie. A woman on the run with her cat in a backpack.'”

She continued, “Matthew has had all of this very shrouded in secrecy. He’s probably a spy himself, or a Bond villain… So he must have been sort of subconsciously influenced in some way, shape, or form. But he had no idea of this rumor until his daughter ran into his room and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Taylor Swift wrote Argylle?'”

Technically, Howard didn’t confirm or deny the rumor about Swift during the interview. She did shout out to the singer’s fan base, however, noting that “the Swifties is such an incredibly supportive community.”

“It got to the point where I was reading these things and I was like, ‘Matthew you haven’t told me the whole truth, man,'” she said. “There’s too many things. And there’s more things! There’s more things when you watch the movie. At one point you’ll see ‘1989.’ That’s like the year Matthew graduated. It’s really, really, really bizarre, but a huge honor to have any association whatsoever with Taylor Swift.”

Vaughn previously spoke about the rumors in an interview with Rolling Stone, saying it’s not true. “I’m not a big Internet guy, and it was actually my daughter who came up to me — this is the power of celebrity and the Internet — and said, ‘You never told me Taylor wrote the book!’” Vaughn said. “And I’m looking at her going, ‘What are you talking about Taylor Swift wrote the book? She didn’t write the book!’ And I was laughing because I was like, ‘It’s not true! She didn’t write the book!’ But my daughter was convinced of it.”

Vaughn was, in fact, adamant that there is a real Elly Conway. “There is a real book… and it’s a really good book. And there is an Elly Conway who wrote the book, but it’s not Taylor Swift,” he said. “And I say that because I imagine Taylor Swift has a load of people trying to jump on her bandwagon left, right, and center, and I don’t want to be a part of that club. I did read the conspiracies and I was like, wow, they don’t leave a stone unturned! But it’s not Taylor Swift. She definitely didn’t write the book.”

Argylle, which also stars Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Samuel L. Jackson, and Dua Lipa, is in theaters Feb. 2.

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