Taylor Swift has shared the family suite with a lot of fellow celebs since she began attending Kansas City Chiefs games to watch her boyfriend, then fiancé and now husband Travis Kelce. But until this week, she’s never sat next to an objectively bigger star than Tom Cruise. When the two were spotted laughing and yucking it up at the Chiefs’ 2026 season kick-off game earlier this week and the world was dying to know what these two mega A-listers were chatting about.
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Well, Cruise, 64, stopped by The Tonight Show on Thursday (Sept. 17) to promote his new film, Digger, and, naturally, host Jimmy Fallon had to ask what the unlikely pals were discussing during the Chiefs’ 31-10 dismantling of the Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football. “When the biggest movie star in the world is sitting next to the biggest artist in the world, what do you talk about?” Fallon wondered.
“She was schooling me on football,” a smiling Cruise responded. “For real?” Fallon said. “For real,” Cruise confirmed. “She was bringing the football. First of all, she’s a genius. I’ve been following her since she was a kid,” said Cruise of Swift, 36. “Everybody there, all their friends, they’re a beautiful couple and magical in their own right. Everybody there in that booth. I hadn’t been to a football game since pre-COVID, where I was working and everything. So to get to hang out there and have that moment, it was a lot of fun … she knows her stuff.”
Cruise, who was among the hundreds of celebrity guests at Swift and Kelce’s wedding in July at Madison Square Garden in New York, said the singer admitted she knew “nothing” about football before meeting Kelce, with Cruise relating a story about Taylor asking Travis what it was like playing against older brother retired NFL great Jason Kelce and tackling each other; both men play on the offensive side of the ball, so they would not have had a chance to tackle each other on the field.
“She said, ‘You know, he’s so patient,’” laughed Cruise, who attended one of Swift’s Eras Tour show in London in 2024. “I said, ‘I’m sure he was.’ I think everybody would be very patient [with her] … [Now] she knows … she’s just bringing it. Cruise said he and Swift also talk about music and movies and he praised her “great sense of humor.”
And, not for nothing, box office colossus Cruise dubbed Swift a “brilliant writer also, by the way. Brilliant musician and director. Very skilled.”
Watch Cruise talk Swift on The Tonight Show below.
