Jake Gyllenhaal was photographed and profiled in W Magazine’s Best Performances issue, and as you can see, this was the photo W posted on their social media and to their site: a Tim Walker photo of Jake in a RED button-down shirt, with RED heart-shaped glasses atop his head. Originally on Instagram, the IG caption read “Red (Jake’s Version)”. Taylor Swift’s snake fans flooded the comments and it got so bad that W Magazine just flat-out changed their caption:
There’s nothing like a Taylor Swift fan scorned. The pop star’s fans were seeing red after W Magazine featured her ex, Jake Gyllenhaal, posing in the fiery color for its annual “Great Performances” portfolio. The problem? The look was allegedly all too similar to Swift’s theme from her 2012 “Red” album, which featured a song about their past relationship.
“Absolutely no one is interested in Jake’s version of red… read the room,” one wrote with an eye-roll emoji as Swift’s fans were sent into a frenzy.
Photographer Tim Walker shot Gyllenhaal wearing a red shirt and heart-shaped sunglasses — similar to a pair Swift wore in her music video for “22” from the album. Coincidentally, Swift recently rereleased “Red” with the addendum (Taylor’s Version), and W dared to post Gyllenhaal’s photo on social media with the caption, “Red (Jake’s Version).”
Swifties picked up on the diss and accused the actor of trolling the pop star, since the album features the track “All Too Well” — supposedly about their 2010 romance. The singer’s fans flooded in with comments such as, “The Swifties are coming for you,” and, “He’s obsessed with Taylor.” Ouch! The mag even eventually changed its caption to stick with lauding Gyllenhaal’s performance in his film, “The Guilty.”
“For our annual Best Performances issue, the actor discusses reimagining the thriller for American audiences, being starstruck by Brad Pitt, and the one movie that always makes him cry,” it wrote.
The damage, however, had already been done as far as Swift’s fans were concerned, and they noticed the edit.
A rep for W did not acknowledge the caption switch, but exclusively told Page Six that the “sole reason” the mag put the actor “in our best performance issue is because his performance in Antoine Fuqua’s ‘The Guilty’ is phenomenal.”
This year’s Best Performances issue was full of colorful photography – Tim Walker and the W stylists put Kristen Stewart and Benedict Cumberbatch in lemon yellow, Dakota Johnson in a vibrant purple, Alana Haim is a striking gold. Jake was the only person in red though. Was that his call, or did W Magazine do that to him? I like to think that Jake does have some sense of the craziness on the internet, and he knows that the Snake Fam is prepared to swarm whenever he says or does anything related to scarves, the color red or… anything. The W Magazine intern who wrote “Red (Jake’s Version)” definitely knew they were kicking the hornet’s nest though. It’s hilarious that the magazine had to change the caption.
IG courtesy of W Magazine, additional photos courtesy of Taylor Swift.
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