For a movie as CGI-ed as Cats, I assume the actors were just as surprised as we were when watching the musical adaptation for the first time. The Tom Hooper flop was pretty universally panned and failed to make much of an impression at the box office. For regular audience members, this just meant a waste of all the memes we had been working on the past few months, but for the actors, did it feel like a waste of an entire job? Not for Taylor Swift.
The singer played Bombularina in the film, and while she only had one line, she's been closely aligned with the production since her casting thanks to the original song she wrote for it and her personal love of cats. While I would pay money to have seen her face watching her little shimmy for the first time, she told Variety that she doesn't regret a thing.
"...I had a really great time working on that weird-ass movie,” she said. “I’m not gonna retroactively decide that it wasn’t the best experience. I never would have met Andrew Lloyd Webber or gotten to see how he works, and now he’s my buddy. I got to work with the sickest dancers and performers. No complaints.”
And who knows — maybe Cats will get the Mamma Mia! treatment. Nobody liked that musical adaptation either when it came out in 2008, but by the time the sequel rolled around, it had accrued tons of adoring fans who (rightfully) believe a movie counts as good if singing along to it fills your heart with joy. Right now, though, "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" only fills me with unease.