Joe Alwyn on creating ‘accidental’ lockdown music with Taylor Swift

Actor Joe Alwyn has said he is proud of the music he and girlfriend Taylor Swift wrote together in lockdown.

The London-born star, 31, has been dating singer-songwriter Swift, 32, since at least 2017, but the pair have remained intensely private about their relationship.

He worked with Swift on her surprise eighth studio album Folklore, writing under the pseudonym William Bowery, and co-wrote a number of songs on the follow-up sister album, Evermore.

He told GQ Hype about writing songs in lockdown: “It was really the most accidental thing to happen in lockdown. It wasn’t like, ‘It’s three o’clock, it’s time to write a song!’.

“It was just messing around on a piano and singing badly and being overheard and then thinking, you know, what if we tried to get to the end of it together?”

“It was nice getting such a positive reception.”

Conversations With Friends follows two Dublin college students, Frances and Bobbi, as they forge a strange and unexpected connection with married couple Melissa (Jemima Kirke) and Nick (Alwyn).

The 12-part series is being made by the producers of Normal People, the hit series based on another of Irish author Rooney’s books.

Alwyn said of Nick’s accent: “I listened to people like Andrew Scott and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and that kind of middle-class south Dublin accent.

“(Nick’s’) is quite anglicised, there was the idea that he would have been to drama school in London and he has a British wife and so maybe some of those sounds have been softened as well.”

The screen adaptation of Normal People was a huge hit and its stars – Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones – received critical acclaim.

The full GQ Hype interview with Joe Alwyn is available online.