John Travolta shakes off Taylor Swift drag queen mix-up
John Travolta tried to hand Jade Jolie an award meant for Taylor Swift. (MTV)
John Travolta joked it would have been “awesome” if he actually had handed over Taylor Swift’s MTV Video Music Award to drag queen Jade Jolie at Monday night’s ceremony.
Speaking on Dallas-Fort Worth radio station Hot 93.3, Travolta – well aware of his infamous history of award ceremony flubs – explained how he has been “fantasising” about how people would have reacted he if did hand over the award to the Drag Race icon.
Travolta mistook Jolie for Taylor Swift live on the stage, presenting the award to her as Swift was still making her way, much to the delight of some viewers.
After the 65-year-old actor mispronounced singer Idina Menzel’s name as “Adele Dazeem” at the 2014 Academy Awards, Travolta was determined not to commit another faux pas.
John Travolta: “I didn’t care.”
”If I shave my head, it’s headlines,” the actor said, “if I mispronounce something, that’s headlines, and I know that about me.”
He added: ”There’s so many people that bombarded the stage, that I was looking for [Swift].
”So the video has me trying to find her, and you know, I thought it was so funny the way it was interpreted.
”And it’s cool, I didn’t care.
”Sometimes I fantasise, what if I had given it to [Jolie]? That would have been awesome. I should have just gone all the way with it.
”I have a sense of humour about all of that – I always have – because, look, we’re in pretty good shape on any given day that that kind of thing could make headlines.”
Swift was shimmying up the stage to collect her award for LGBT-themed clip, ‘You Need To Calm Down’, when the flub happened.
As a gaggle of drag queens who starred in the video clacked onto the stage in their heels, cameras caught Travolta as he manoeuvred up to Jolie and tried to hand her the moon man trophy.
Thankfully, Jolie laughed it off and hugged the Pulp Fiction actor to defuse the situation. But her co-star Tatianna looked on, comically stunned.
All the while Swift made her way to the stage, she was then joined by Todrick Hall and queens including Akeria C Davenport and Trinity The Tuck.
“You voting for this video means that you want a world where we’re all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, regardless of how we identify,” Swift said in her thank you speech.
Moreover, she urged fans who hadn’t already signed her petition supporting the Equality Act to go out and do so, adding to the more than half a million signatures already dotted.
Earlier, Swift and her cast of queens had opened the show by recreating the ‘You Need To Calm Down’ video. But behind the scenes, she voiced to producers that she wouldn’t perform at all unless her drag queen team received awards, too.
