The ‘Deadpool’ director — who joined the superstar at the Chiefs-Jets game with Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds — says Swift is a “good role model” for his girls
If you’re suddenly hearing a lot about Deadpool 3 director and Stranger Things producer Shawn Levy, it’s likely because he was snapped in Taylor Swift’s suite at the Oct. 1 Chiefs vs. Jets game that he attended with his two best pals Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds.
But Levy, 55, who has directed massive movies including The Adam Project, Free Guy and the Night at the Museum franchise, says Taylor Swift actually gave him cool cred long before that infamous football game — especially when it came to his four daughters.
“You have to understand, my daughters are between the ages of 12 to 24,” Levy — who appeared in Swift’s 2021 project All Too Well: The Short Film — tells PEOPLE exclusively. “So Taylor Swift has been their only shared idol for that entire span of their lives.”
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Continues Levy, whose latest project, Netflix’s All the Light We Cannot See, is out Nov. 2: “When she asked me to be in the video for All Too Well, and I was able to bring all four daughters to be in that video with me, I got dad cred for life.”
Levy says that Swift, 31, whom he initially met through Reynolds and his wife Blake Lively, asked him to play her father in the video (directed by the Grammy winner).
“I’ve directed both of those actors respectively,” Levy says of Dylan O’Brien and Sadie Sink, who starred as the leads in the short film. “Dylan O’Brien in The Internship, and Sadie Sink in Stranger Things. But that was one of the few times that I’ve acted in the past 20 years. It was a very fun day.”
Levy says he managed to land his girls roles as guests at Sadie Sink’s birthday party — and it’s an experience he says they’ll certainly never forget.
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“Definitely, any parent loves to give their kids a thrill,” he says of the amazing coup, adding that he’s been lucky as a working dad to make projects that usually entertain his daughters.
“When they were young, I was doing these family comedy films that they could see with their friends, like Night at the Museum and Pink Panther. Then as they became teens, I started producing Stranger Things. With my upcoming series All the Light We Cannot See, they’re able to watch that too. It’s been a fluke, but I’ve been very, very lucky in that way.”
As for being at the Jets-Chiefs game — where Swift was watching her rumored beau Travis Kelce play — Levy says it was a level of fame and frenzy he’d never seen before.
“I have never witnessed, and will likely never again witness anything like I saw when I went to the football game with Taylor Swift,” he says with a laugh. Still, he didn’t hate it, and he certainly doesn’t mind that his daughters are die-hard Swifties.
“You know what, as a dad of four girls, their collective fan-hood and mild obsession with Taylor is fine by me, because she’s a good role model,” he says. “And most importantly, that woman wrote all of those songs herself. This is a true generational creative genius. She a force — and she’s also a really fun hang.”
