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.”
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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