Recently, Elisabeth Moss hasn’t so much been on a charm offensive as she has been on a chill offensive.

If you thought the actor was overly drawn to darkness and despair, think again, Moss’ most recent interviews seem to suggest. Sure, she may be the star of the devastating The Handmaid’s Tale, and the forthcoming literal horror movie The Invisible Man, but Moss wants you to know that she’s actually a very happy person, really. She loves cheesy, dorky Christmas movies as much as you do, and mainlines them from November right through to the end of the holiday season. Her favourite colour is pink. Her apartment is an ode to rose gold: she has a millennial pink rug and a lovely little fluffy throw on her bed from West Elm.

And she loves Taylor Swift.

The country-pop superstar is Moss’ favourite artist, so much so that when everything gets too hard on the set of The Handmaid’s Tale – like when she has to film a bleak rape scene, or when she has long, dramatic swathes of script to get through – she goes to her Spotify (or her iTunes account, we don’t know what tech she prefers) and queues up some Swift.

“I feel like I’ve been on a journey with her,” Moss explained to Vulture. “I’ve had break-ups at the same time as her, found people at the same time as her. I would die to be in her squad.” (Moss? In the Swift squad? Going down that inflatable pool slide in a Stars and Stripes swimsuit at Swift’s Fourth of July party? You absolutely love to see it.)

It shouldn’t be a surprise that Moss loves Swift so much: the pair have a lot in common. Both adore their cats (Moss has two). Both love romantic comedies (Moss admits she has seen When Harry Met Sally “one zillion” times). Both are fascinated with the lives of other celebrities. “Tell me everything,” Moss asked the Vulture journalist, on the subject of Jennifer Lawrence’s wedding. “Who did she marry? How long have they been together?”

No wonder, then, that Moss feels drawn to Swift’s particularly fizzy and ebullient brand of pop when she’s in need of a mood boost. Which, admittedly, is quite a lot of the time on the set of The Handmaid’s Tale. 

And she’s not the only one who uses Swift to help her get through tough times.

Lupita Nyong’o has also spoken about how Swift’s anthem Shake It Off helped her cope with a particularly bad bout of homesickness. So much so that in her new zombie comedy, Little Monsters, Nyong’o requested that her character sing Shake It Off in a particularly tense scene to help diffuse the mood of the moment.

“Shake It Off means a lot to me,” Nyong’o has said. “I was going through a hard time professionally and I was just in a funk. I was working abroad and my best friend came to cheer me up. He played Shake It Off on his phone, and we just had a dance party in my bedroom.”

She continued: “It meant a lot to me that [Little Monsters] had that [song]. And so when I heard they were having a hard time [getting the rights] I wrote Taylor Swift myself and asked her, and told her that story. And she said yes!” 

Swifties, the lot of them.

Images: Getty