Glamour: Obviously you were an established filmmaker before this, but Taylor Swift is one of the top pop stars in the world. How is life right now?

Lana Wilson: It’s been amazing. It’s been overwhelming, and I have been totally stunned by the response. I usually make films where they’re about subjects where I kind of have to coax or persuade people to watch them. And this is a film, I feel like everyone on earth watched it within the first 48 hours of it coming out.

How has the reaction to the documentary affected you?

It was incredible. I knew there was going to be a big audience, but I hadn’t been expecting anything like this. It’s been such a positive reaction. People are connecting to it in a really deep way, which was, of course, my dream when making the movie. But I worked on it in secret, so for it to have this kind of reaction is the most gratifying thing in the world.

How did you keep your work a secret?

Well, you lose a lot of friends, because everyone gets annoyed that you won’t tell them what you’re working on. [Laughs.]

Considering the sensitive topics the film covered and Taylor Swift’s standing in the industry, how did you build your connection with her?

I think one of the first things we connected about was about being artists in male-dominated industries. We had a lot of shared experiences even though we inhabit very different worlds. There were some things in common that I could totally understand about her experience because of my own experience as a female director. I think there’s a layer of nonjudgment, especially when it comes to stuff like talking about body image, talking about the sexual assault trial. I do think you have an extra layer of comfort there for sure.

Tell me more about how you chose to present her speaking out about her eating disorder.

When she’s in the car talking about body image, we put in these flat-aspect images of her on the red carpet during the 1989 tour while she’s talking because I think that those images of her when she was struggling with this makes it so much more visceral and more emotional.

I remember seeing those images, some of them in magazines or on the internet, and I never thought that wasn’t normal. You know how skinny she was. I didn’t think twice about it. And I think when you see the images juxtaposed with her in the car now reflecting on it, you realize, Wow, we all have a veil over our eyes. We’re so used to seeing one type of body on every magazine cover in the supermarket and thinking that’s normal, and often beating ourselves up and hating ourselves if we don’t look like that.

I think to see Taylor, someone who’s an icon of beauty, voicing these thoughts that so many people have had is incredibly, incredibly powerful because it’s not something you would expect to hear. Then it makes you kind of think back on everything you’ve seen in your own experience in a different way. I don’t know if you read the incredible post that…is her name Nikki Glaser?

Yes. What did you think about that apology to Taylor?