Teyana Taylor Discusses Making Kanye’s “Fade” Video

Some unused Beyoncé choreography is in the video
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During this weekend’s MTV Video Music Awards, Kanye West debuted his new music video for “Fade.” The video starred GOOD Music artist Teyana Taylor and Cleveland Cavaliers guard Iman Shumpert. In an interview with Vogue, Taylor opened up about working on the video. She discussed everything from getting the call to make the video to working in some unused Beyoncé choreography. Read some highlights from the interview below.

On old choreography originally meant for Beyoncé making it into the video:

The dance scene at the very, very end, maybe the last eight counts that I did; me and one of my homeboys Matthew Pasterisa actually made that choreography for Beyoncé for when the “End of Time” came out. She loved it but she wound up not being able to use it because she was pregnant, but back then the world didn’t know. All this time that choreography was just sitting there. And as soon as I was freestyling it just came out naturally.

On working with sheep:

Let’s talk about these sheep first, though. They were shitting all over the place—there was poop everywhere! And then little Junie is just so fearless; she’s playing with the sheep. I was just looking at Ye, like Yo, I don’t know what you got going on, but I know it’s going to be good. Because you know with Ye, you just gotta trust him. He’s a genius and you know he just got something up his sleeve.

On not getting an explanation for the cat face:

Yeah, he was just like, I’m going to put you in this cat face. It’s going to be chic. At the same time, being an actor, I love doing stuff like that—to be able to get dressed up and get out of my comfort zone. I was very excited to do something different and artistic, but since we shot backwards, at first, I didn’t know what was going on. I thought, This crazy mother-effer. He’s got 15 sheep in this gym right now, with poop all over the place. It’s crazy the thing that happens behind the scenes; my wig almost flew off. It’s just so dope to watch the final product and know all the things that went into it. From the bottom of the heart this meant so much to me.

Read the full interview here. Read Pitchfork’s interview with the choreographer of the “Fade” video.