The former chief of MTV has revealed for the first time that both Taylor Swift and Beyoncé were left in tears after the infamous ‘Imma let you finish‘ moment at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about life after MTV, Van Toffler was asked to recount his favourite VMAs story. And it wasn’t actually about Kanye West interrupting Taylor’s acceptance speech – it was about what happened next.
“When Kanye walked up onstage with Taylor that year, it turned out that Taylor had to go onstage to do her song five minutes later,” he said. “I ran out of the truck to see that everything was all right, and Taylor and her mom were crying hysterically. I’m not always wonderful with emotions. I didn’t know what to say. Then I went backstage, and Beyoncé was crying, too.”
Favourite. Story. Two crying pop stars and a hysterical mum.
Later that evening, when Beyoncé won ‘Video of the Year‘ for ‘Single Ladies’ (Taylor’s music video for ‘You Belong With Me‘ had only picked up the ‘Best Female Video‘ award), Bey brought Taylor up on stage to finish her acceptance speech.
But the repercussions of that incident are still being felt. As the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards approached, Taylor Instagrammed a huge bunch of flowers sent to her by Kanye, with the hashtags #KanTay2020 and #BFFs.
But then it all went awry when Kanye included the line in his 2016 track ‘Famous‘: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex / Why? I made that bitch famous.”
Kanye claimed Taylor had approved the line, Taylor claimed she didn’t, which of course led us to the infamous Kim Kardashian Snapchats that proved that yeah, she kinda did.
Taylor later – well, almost immediately after – claimed she simply objected to the words “that bitch”.
Photo: Christopher Polk / Getty.
