Why Twilight: New Moon Director Turned Down Casting Taylor Swift

In an appearance on Ashley Greene's The Twilight Effect podcast, director Chris Weitz opened up about the casting process for the film -- and surprised even Greene by revealing that Swift's agent lobbied to get her into the movie.

"The craziest [casting story] of all was to hear that Taylor Swift was a huge Twi-hard," Weitz revealed on the latest episode. "Taylor Swift and I had the same agent at the time and he said, 'Taylor would like to be in this movie – not because of you, but she's a Twi-hard. She will be someone at the cafeteria, or the diner, or whatever, but she just wants to be in this movie.'"

But Weitz didn't bite.

"The hardest thing for me was to be like, 'The moment that Taylor Swift walks onto the screen for about five minutes, nobody is going to be able to process anything,'" he added, explaining his reasoning for turning her down.

Looking back, the director said he kicks himself over the decision because he "could have been, like hanging out with Taylor Swift and maybe we could've been friends or something.'" He added, "She must've just been like, 'Who is this jerk who would say no?' But sometimes you make decisions and you go, 'This is for the best of the film.'"

As Greene reacted with an, "Oh my god, I didn't know that," Weisz joked about how ridiculous it sounds now that in a film about vampires and werewolves battling for the love of a mortal teenage girl, Swift is the thing he thought would "break the realism" of the project.

During his appearance, the director also confirmed the studio "had originally just assumed" they would recast Taylor Lautner in the sequel, since his character Jacob "turns into a 6'5" monster" between books. He said there was "no animus toward Taylor," but the studio wasn't sure his transformation would translate on screen without casting another actor in the part.

"I said, 'No, I really like this kid and he's great,'" recalled Weisz, saying Lautner was thankfully "willing to get incredibly jacked for the movie."

"There was a bit of a moment where I was just kind of stubborn about that, I don't want to see anyone else, this kid's going to be great. I think I was right about that," he continued. "He did know that something was on the bubble. I remember sitting down to lunch with him and it was clear that he thought he was supposed to convince me he was the guy to do it. I said, 'I want you to do this, you're my guy, let's figure out how to present this.'"

Check out Greene's full interview below: