We may not know what Taylor Swift is announcing tonight at midnight, but we do know that she loves cats, and that she is playing a cat in the movie Cats (specifically, Bombalurina — yes, that’s the name of the cat; yes, Cats is wild). In a video interview with Time, Swift, a serious Method actor and student of the craft if ever there was one, said she took the role “for the ladies†(i.e., her cats), and that to prepare, “I went to cat school, which they have on set readily available for us.†Swift did not elaborate on what exactly “cat school†might be, but said she “learned how to be as much like a cat as I possibly could.â€
One imagines there are movement classes on catlike poses, or perhaps an intense dive into the psychology of cat-ness. Perhaps there are Meisner-esque mirror-technique cat exercises, or perhaps a Viewpoints-influenced study of cat movement. If you were to push Taylor Swift off a table at this point (which we do not recommend), she would land on all fours, like a cat. Did Idris Elba also have to go to cat school? Did Jennifer Hudson? Did Dame Judi Dench? This, sadly, we do not know. What we do know about Cats is that Tom Hooper is directing Cats and that Andy Blankenbuehler is choreographing Cats and that the cats in Cats will be the size of actual cats. To paraphrase the musical itself: Jellicle cats develop slowly, Jellicle cats are not too big, Jellicle cats are roly-poly, Jellicle cats are well-educated.