Taylor Swift premiered the new music video for her The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore track “Patient Zero” at the 2026 Video Music Awards on Sunday night. The clip, which co-stars Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell, follows a slowly dissolving relationship between a married couple (Johnson and Farrell), while the husband’s now-deceased ex-wife (Swift) attempts to warn Johnson before it’s too late. Cara Delevingne makes an appearance too. It’s not on YouTube yet so you’ll have to head to Spotify or Apple Music to watch.
It was a fitting occasion for Swift to drop a new video: she received the inaugural MTV VMA Artist Director Honors this year, a new award reserved for “whose work behind the camera has expanded the possibilities of music video and advanced the art of visual storytelling,” per the network. Swift was up for nine VMAs total this evening, making her the second-most nominated artist of the night, next to Madonna’s 13.
The premiere also capped off a busy week for Swift, who dropped an expanded edition of her 2025 album The Life of a Showgirl on Friday. Swift wrote the four new songs on The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore—”Patient Zero,” “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding,” and “Babylon”—with TLOAS co-producers Max Martin and Shellback while celebrating the album’s success in Sweden in 2025.
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