Steve Carell has been a fan of Taylor Swift since day one.
“Listen, I met — briefly — I met Taylor Swift,” Carell, 61, said during the Monday, June 10, episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “So early on in my career and in hers too, I was obviously much older, but we were both on TRL at the same time. I met her sort of in passing and I thought, ‘Boy … she seems special,’ like, even back then.”
The Office alum noted that Swift, now 34, seemed “very sweet” and “very nice,” adding that he “had a really nice first impression” after they met.
“And then years later, obviously following her career, I remember — and she became a big superstar — I remember seeing some video of her, and it wasn’t like a big viral thing,” Carell continued. “It was just something I found in the recesses of the internet. And it was her in a hospital playing an acoustic guitar for a patient there. Some kid who was, you know, recovering from something.”
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Carell added that “there was no big crew” with Swift to capture her moment of hospitality. “It was like a really low-key, handheld [camera] thing that she sort of just did on the sly,” he said.
The clip has stuck with Carell years later. “And I thought, ‘That’s so cool,’” he recalled. “And not publicized it. Just, you know, leading with her heart. I thought, ‘OK, I’m a fan.’”
When host Jimmy Fallon then told Carell that he seemed like a “really nice human as well,” the actor teased, “No, no, no. No, not Taylor Swift level.”
While Swift may have had humble beginnings as a budding performer, she’s since become one of the biggest artists in the world. She’s won 14 Grammy Awards, 23 MTV Video Music Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, 39 Billboard Music Awards and 40 American Music Awards.
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Before releasing her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, in April, Swift resumed The Eras Tour, which initially kicked off in the U.S. in March 2023 and will conclude in December. It has become the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, beating Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.
Carell, for his part, has made a wide range of choices throughout his career on screen, from the animated Despicable Me franchise to the emotional movie Welcome to Marwen. The actor, who played Michael Scott on The Office from 2005 to 2013, recently left fans disappointed when said he wouldn’t return for the upcoming spinoff.
“I will be watching, but I will not be showing up,” Carell told The Hollywood Reporter last month. “It’s just a new thing and there’s really no reason for my character to show up in something like that. But I’m excited about it, it sounds like a great conceit.”
