John Travolta’s history of awkward awards show moments continued on Monday at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards in New Jersey, when he almost accidentally gave the Video of the Year award to RuPaul’s Drag Race star Jade Jolie instead of Taylor Swift. Travolta spoke out about the already-infamous mix-up, joking that he probably should have gone all the way and given Jade the award.
“There’s so many people that bombarded the stage, that I was looking for [Taylor],” Travolta told the Dallas-Fort Worth radio station Hot 93.3 Thursday, reports Us Weekly. “So the video has me trying to find her, and you know, I thought it was so funny the way it was interpreted — it was cool. I didn’t care.”
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Travolta added, “Sometimes I fantasize what if I had given it to [Jolie]. That would have been awesome. … I should have just gone all the way with it.”
In the interview, Travolta said he knows Swift after going to concerts with his daughter and wife Kelly Preston.
“She’s been so good to my daughter and my wife at concerts. I’ve written her notes and she’s written back,” Travolta said. “The first thing she did last night was thank me for the notes that I’ve sent [her] and acknowledging that.”
On Monday, Travolta was at the center of a couple odd moments. He took the stage with Queen Latifah to present the Video of the Year award, and refused to read out the winner because he was afraid of messing up again.
“I shouldn’t do this because I’ll just mispronounce s– and f– it up. You do it,” Travolta said as he handed Latifah the envelope.
After Latifah announced Swift won for “You Need to Calm Down,” Swift and her entire entourage came to the stage. Jolie was dressed as a Swift impersonator, and Travolta appeared to be giving the award to her until he saw the real Swift.
“He was so confident that it was her,” Todrick Hall, who co-executive produced the “You Need to Calm Down” video and is a longtime Swift friend, told Jerry O’Connell of the viral moment. “I loved it! I saw it, and we talked about it backstage. Taylor thought it was hilarious.”
Hall went on to praise Jolie, and said that mistaking her for the real Swift was the “highest compliment” from Travolta.
“Jade Jolie has made quite the living performing at Play nightclub and she is a fantastic drag queen,” Hall said on The Jerry O Show. “Everybody knows that she is the Taylor Swift doppelgänger, so I think that was the highest compliment he could pay her.”
Jolie also thought the moment was hilarious, posting a clip of it on Instagram. “Almost got my first award tonight thanks to [John Travolta],” Jolie wrote.
Travolta has a long history of awkward awards show moments, from standing too close to Scarlett Johansson to mispronouncing Idina Menzel as “Adele Dazeem.” It almost makes one wonder why he was invited, especially to a music awards show when he is not a musician.
Travolta’s new movie, The Fanatic, is now in theaters. Swift’s latest album, Lover, is now in stores.
Photo credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for MTV
