Many fans think Taylor Swift is the ghostwriter behind the novel that inspired the upcoming film Argylle — and director Matthew Vaughn’s daughter is one of them.
“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, 52, told Rolling Stone in an interview published on Tuesday, January 16. “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.”
Argylle, which hits theaters on Friday, February 2, and stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Henry Cavill, follows reclusive author Elly Conway (Howard) as she writes best-selling spy novels about a secret agent named Argylle (Cavill), who’s on a mission to unravel a global spy syndicate. Things take a turn when the plots of her books start to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization.
The film is inspired by a recently published novel of the same name, which was written by an author using the pseudonym Elly Conway. The author’s true identity has remained a mystery since Apple bought the film rights for a reported $200 million in August 2021, with Jason Fuchs adapting the novel into a script.
Pseudonymous authors aren’t unheard of, but the small amount of information known about Conway sparked conspiracy theories about who is actually behind the story. Swift, 34, became a primary candidate over the past several months for several reasons.
In addition to Swift’s love for argyle sweaters, the pop star has a history of using fake names for some of her projects. In 2016, she cowrote Rihanna’s “This Is What You Came For” with now-ex Calvin Harris under the pseudonym Nils Sjöberg. On her 2020 release Evermore, she credited then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn for three songs under the faux moniker William Bowery. (Alwyn, 32, also cowrote the track “Sweet Nothing” from her 2022 record, Midnights.)
Despite the clues, Vaughn insists that Swift is not the secret author of Argylle — but he appreciates the investigative prowess of Swift fans everywhere.
“There is a real book … and it’s a really good book,” Vaughn explained. “And there is an Elly Conway who wrote the book, but it’s not Taylor Swift. And I say that because I imagine Taylor Swift has a load of people trying to jump on her bandwagon left, right and center. 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.”
That doesn’t mean Vaughn didn’t pull some inspiration from Swift in other areas. Vaughn admitted that the Grammy winner is the reason a Scottish Fold cat appears in the film. Vaughn and his wife, Claudia Schiffer, adopted one after their daughters fell in love with Swift’s Scottish Folds, Meredith Grey and Olivia Benson, while watching her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana.
“Ironically, what [Taylor] is responsible for is the Scottish Fold,” Vaughn shared “I got home one day, it was Christmas, and I was like, ‘What the f–k is that noise?’ And I’m running around the house and I hear a noise, and the kids had seen a Taylor Swift documentary and there was a Scottish Fold in that, and they’d persuaded my wife, Claudia, to get them the kitten for Christmas. It was bought without my permission and hidden from me.”
While Swift may not be behind Argylle, her career has been expanding beyond music and into other artistic ventures in the past few years. In 2022, she made her directorial debut with All Too Well: The Short Film. She is also set to direct her first feature with Searchlight Pictures, based on a script she wrote.
“Taylor is a once-in-a-generation artist and storyteller,” Searchlight presidents David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield shared in a December 2022 statement. “It is a genuine joy and privilege to collaborate with her as she embarks on this exciting and new creative journey.”
Swift, for her part, opened up about the potential narratives she hopes to explore during a screening of All Too Well at Toronto’s International Film Festival in September 2022.
“I think I will always want to tell human stories about human emotion. I never say never, but I can’t imagine myself filming an action sequence,” she confessed. “If it happens one day, honestly, that’ll be funny character growth, but at this point, I could see it going in a more comedic, irreverent place.”
While certain genres are off the table for now, that doesn’t mean fans should assume they know what to expect from Swift’s filmmaking. “I don’t always see myself telling stories about extreme, guttural heartbreak at your most formative age that debilitates you emotionally for years and then you have to develop the scar tissue in order to move on with your life, and limp your way to your typewriter and write a novel about it,” she said. “I think I’ve done that.”
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