When Taylor Swift mentions a particular place in one of her songs, it often becomes a site of pilgrimage for Swifties. Now, the location where she filmed her latest video has become a gathering place, too.
A large part of Taylor’s “Opalite” video was filmed at the Whitgift Shopping Centre in Croydon, a town in South London. The U.K. paper The Evening Standard reports that fans have been showing up at the center to take selfies of themselves riding the escalator while eating pretzels, which Taylor and co-star Domhnall Gleeson do in the video.
The shopping center, which was completed in 1970, has fallen on hard times like many malls, with more closed stores than open ones. It was supposed to have been redeveloped by 2017, but work never started on the project.
In the video, the store where Graham Norton is seen selling the “Opalite” reverse formula, “Nopalite,” was actually the mall’s Clarks shoe store. The manager told My London, “I think it was a real boost for Croydon. People have come to take pictures of the escalators.”
“Obviously, it was all secret, so it was a relief when it all came out,” she said of the filming, adding, “It was great. It looked like there was some soul and life in here.”
A former mall employee told My London, “If she’s putting Croydon on the map, I am now her biggest fan … I used to enjoy coming to Croydon, but now it’s sad and empty.”
As previously reported, Taylor cast every guest who was with her on the couch last year on The Graham Norton Show in the video, including Graham, Domhnall, Lewis Capaldi, Cillian Murphy, Jodie Turner-Smith and Greta Lee. Since hitting YouTube on Sunday, it’s racked up nearly 8 million views.
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