Notorious Celebrity Interviews: Tom Hiddleston for GQ, 2017

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Every once in a while, a celebrity interview comes along that is so infamous, so cringeworthy, so epic that it simply becomes legendary. Tom Hiddleston's profile in the February 2017 GQ is one of those interviews.

Let us travel back in time: In 2016, Tom Hiddleston was flying high, starring as Loki and playing several critically acclaimed roles in smaller projects. Then... he started dating Taylor Swift. This interview was his first major piece of PR after Hiddleswift, and...well... you just have to read it.



Tom Hiddleston on Taylor Swift, Heartbreak, and Great Bolognese
by Taffy Brodesser-Ackner

• Now, to be totally fair, the writer's commentary is very, very opinionated and definitely colored the profile. It could definitely be argued that she created an exaggerated caricature for the sake of an entertaining piece of writing. Here is the opener:

Tom! Hiddleston! Loves! This! Bolognese!

It’s amazing Bolognese, the most incredible Bolognese you’ve ever had. You think you’ve had great Bolognese? Try Tom Hiddleston’s Bolognese before you continue to talk about great Bologneses you’ve had in your life.

• The writer emphasizes his endearing-yet-exhausting enthusiasm:

Tom Hiddleston is enthusiastic about everything: Barack Obama (“An enormously temperate man!”); his Thor director, Kenneth Branagh (“Such a humanist!”); Jonathan Franzen’s Purity (“It holds the Internet to account-it shows you how it can distort identity in an unhealthy way!”); Moana (“Incredible!”); Dwayne Johnson in particular (“That man radiates joy!”); Matt Damon (“I think he’s got real integrity!”); Michael Fassbender (“Extraordinary!”); Chiwetel Ejiofor (Amazing!”); this porridge he makes, which is just oatmeal and almond milk and chia seeds (“I’m obsessed!”).

• And she really captures his smarm:

Hiddleston does a brief impression of Tom Hanks (he does very good impressions of everyone, including me after a day) that is hard to describe, except to say that it summons Tom Hanks in a very profound way. Its only flaw is also part of its charm: While he does the impression, he’s also looking at you to see how much you’re enjoying it, and then he can’t stop smiling when he sees that you are, so ultimately what you get is an impression of Tom Hiddleston enjoying himself doing a Tom Hanks impression.

• To be fair, though, the writer is just as dramatic as Tom is:

In his kitchen, he makes our third cup of tea of the day; by the end of my interview, we will both be in kidney failure from all this tea, and we will finish talking while hooked up to dialysis machines.

• And now we get to his fuckery with Taylor.

“If you’re under attack,” he says, looking me square in the eye, his voice raw, “if your values are under attack, if you’re being shamed, if you’re being humiliated, the animal response is to hide in the bush. It’s to be less, to make yourself smaller, to diminish in size and volume. And the lesson of 2016 is we have to love more, we have to risk more, we have to be braver, we have to be more outspoken.”

It wasn’t until much later that night, after we’d parted, that I realized we had started talking about Taylor Swift long before we started talking about Taylor Swift.

• The journo doesn't even pretend to be subtle about the fakeness of Hiddleswift:

It is tempting to say that the union of Hiddleswift was cooked up in a panicked publicist’s office: That professional breakup lyricist Taylor Swift-who knew this very magazine was about to publish a story suggesting that maybe she hadn’t been so honest about whether she knew she’d be a lyric in Kanye’s “Famous,” that maybe there was even a videotape to prove it-urgently needed a professional, tactical, romantical distraction. That maybe a British actor who was trying to break through to an American audience sensed an opportunity to become something more here. Maybe those two urgent impulses led to them sitting on the rocks, having a perfect kissing moment, while a person with a camera stood not so far away and took pictures.

• She ain't falling for his PR bullshit:

“Taylor is an amazing woman,” reads the prepared statement Tom Hiddleston has memorized and is now giving me...“She’s generous and kind and lovely, and we had the best time.”

But I didn’t ask that, I say. I asked something else. So I wait, and he says, “Of course it was real.”

• Don't forget the tank top:

I ask if he wants to say anything about Australia, about the Fourth of July party at which he donned that fateful tank top, about the rumors that she thought he was too eager. Does he want to say anything about any of it?

“The truth is, it was the Fourth of July and a public holiday and we were playing a game and I slipped and hurt my back. And I wanted to protect the graze from the sun and said, ’Does anyone have a T-shirt?’ And one of her friends said, ’I’ve got this.’ ” The friend pulled out the "I ♥ T.S." tank top that Taylor’s friends are contractually obligated to own. “And we all laughed about it. It was a joke.”

So that’s his statement on the entire relationship: an explanation of the tank top. “It was a joke,” he repeats. “Among friends.”

• He will not shut up about the damn tank top:

[Tom] is definitely, without a doubt, someone who would put on an "I ♥ T.S." tank top, both to protect a scratch from sun damage and to make his new friends laugh while th-wait, sorry, he’s still talking:

“I have to be so psychologically strong about not letting other people’s interpretations about my life affect my life. A relationship exists between two people. We will always know what it was. The narratives that are out there altogether have been extrapolated from pictures that were taken without consent or permission, with no context. Nobody had the context for that story. And I’m still trying to work out a way of having a personal life and protecting it, but also without hiding. So the hardest thing is that that was a joke among friends on the Fourth of July.”

... He is so sad, and I can’t take it anymore, so I put my hand on his and I say, “Tom, Tom, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about the tank top anymore. I got it. I understand. I’ll tell the world.” But he can’t stop talking about it. He literally cannot stop talking about it.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just, I was surprised. I was just surprised that it got so much attention. The tank top became an emblem of this thing.” It’s hard to tell me this, he says. He wants to trust me. He wants to trust that the world won’t use this to embarrass him again, but he doesn’t know. He just knows it will follow him until he talks about it.

• Seriously. He goes to the writer's hotel room in the morning to talk about it more.

The next morning, I wake up at five to pack for my flight back to New York, and I see an e-mail from Tom, sent the night before, asking if he could come to my hotel to talk to me about something. I tell him yes. He lives 20 minutes away; 15 minutes later he knocks on my door.

He explains that he wants to be honest with me, that it would be hypocritical of him to talk about honesty in the world and then not be with me. I have to understand, he says, that a relationship is between two people, that it doesn’t belong to him alone... it is neither practical nor wise to let rumors hang in the air. He wants me to know that he has no regrets, he says, “because you have to fight for love. You can’t live in fear of what people might say. You know, you have to be true to yourself.”

But I understood all that, I tell him. I understood last night. It’s six in the morning, Tom. I have a flight to catch. And he shakes his head, feeling foolish because maybe there was something he thought he could say that wasn’t quite coming out the right way, and instead he says, “Yeah, okay, I just wanted to make sure.”

• However, although he is uncool, he is indeed very hot:

By most definitions, Tom Hiddleston is...uncool. His vulnerability, his enthusiasm, his Bolognese, these are not trademarks of a dashing movie star. And yet here he is, a sweet-natured bookworm trapped in the second act of a movie where the overlooked geek has been given the face and body of the only man who should ever be allowed to wear a suit.

• For the "Is-He-Hot-Or-Just-Tall" crowd:

A thing you learn doing these interviews is that actors are always far shorter than you ever imagined. Tom Hiddleston isn’t. He is tall and strapping, and I kept thinking that it is so Tom Hiddleston to live up to the hype.

Aaaaand if you are interested, here is the original ONTD post about the interview -- with all 700+ comments!

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