Joe Alwyn Is Barely in Taylor Swift ‘Miss Americana’ Doc, but Not for the Reason Swifties Might Think
The director of Miss Americana is opening up about Joe Alwyn’s blink-and-miss-it appearance in the 2020 Taylor Swift documentary. Swifties might venture to guess it came down to the actor’s desire for privacy. But director Lana Wilson says that wasn’t necessarily the case.
Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriend, Joe Alwyn, is briefly seen in ‘Miss Americana’
For viewers hoping to get a glimpse of Swift and her ex-boyfriend together in Miss Americana, they were disappointed when it premiered. The documentary, which is streaming on Netflix, never actually showed Alwyn’s face. He wasn’t interviewed or seen in any scenes alongside his then-girlfriend.
Instead, Swift’s only seen hugging a mystery man in a denim jacket and black baseball after one of her performances who is assumed to be Alwyn. (See it at the 1:07 mark in the trailer.) The two dated for more than six years from 2016 to 2023 before splitting shortly after Swift’s Eras tour began.
The director felt Swift’s relationship with Alwyn wasn’t ‘related’ to the documentary’s ‘themes’
During a screening of Miss Americana at the Museum of Moving Image in New York on Nov. 23, 2024, Miss Americana director Lana Wilson explained why Alwyn’s brief appearance in the documentary. Spoiler: It’s not because he’s known to be private about his personal life. Rather, because Wilson felt the Swift-Alwyn romance had no place in Miss Americana.
“I didn’t even meet him [Alwyn] till the very end [of filming],” she said (via Daily Mail). “But no, because her relationships have been through the microscope, I didn’t really have any interest in filming that.”
Swift, she continued “has been through so much. This should be private. Like it’s not related to the themes in the film or what I thought she was going through right then.”
“I thought she was going through something so profound and powerful—this real change that didn’t really have anything to do with her relationships,” the Miss Americana director went on. “So it was never something I wanted to film actually. It felt disrespectful and weird to me. It never occurred to me in a strange way.”
Taylor’s doing the opposite of what she did with Alwyn in Travis Kelce relationship
While Alwyn and Swift were known for being intensely private about their romance—the two were rarely seen together publicly—it’s the opposite with the “Fortnight” singer and Travis Kelce.
Swift and Kelce started dating in the summer of 2023 after the Kansas City Chiefs tight end put the Grammy winner “on blast” during an episode of his “New Heights” podcast. Since then, she’s cheered Kelce on many times at football games. (They memorably kissed on the field after the Chiefs’ Super Bowl win.)
As for Kelce, he attended many shows during Swift’s Eras tour. He also got a shoutout from Swift in her VMAs acceptance speech.
As Swift told Time during her Person of the Year interview in December 2023, she and Kelce “don’t care” about their romance being public.
“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves,” she said. “We’re showing up for each other. Other people are there and we don’t care.”
“The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone,” she added, seemingly referencing her relationship with Alwyn. “And we’re just proud of each other.”
