When Taylor Swift returns to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Monday, Oct. 6, it won’t just be another late-night stop on her The Life of a Showgirl promo tour. It will also mark a full-circle reunion with one of her earliest celebrity idols: Keri Russell.

A Teenage Idol Turned Greenroom Companion

Russell, best known for Felicity and Waitress, is also booked for Fallon’s Oct. 6 episode — sitting in the second guest chair right after Swift. While that’s routine scheduling for NBC, it carries unique significance for Swift, who once gushed about Russell in a 2008 MySpace blog post titled “Keri Russell is the coolest celebrity ever.”

In the post, Swift described meeting Russell at a corporate event where Swift had been hired to perform. She recalled being starstruck:

“I’ve always been obsessed with her because she rocks the curly hair, and was AMAZING in The Waitress and Felicity. When we met her, she was SO incredibly cool… She was really genuine, and funny.”

Swift even remembered Russell pausing to share her entire haircare routine with Swift’s banjo player, Ben Clark, whose wife had asked for tips.

“She gets out a piece of paper, and writes down EXACTLY what products she uses, what blow dryers she uses, and exactly what she does to make her hair straight or curly,” Swift wrote.

“It seems simple, but [Russell] had so many people who wanted to talk to her, and still she took the time to do that… I just think it’s so awesome when cool people don’t know they’re cool. Love her!”

For fans, seeing Swift and Russell share a greenroom 17 years later is the kind of Easter egg-worthy full-circle moment Swifties live for.

Russell Returns the Admiration

Russell has also tipped her hat back to Swift in recent years. In a 2023 Variety interview, she joked about being “obsessed” with the pop star. At the time, Russell was starring in a stage reading of Dear Mr. Thomas, a play about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas — the very same poet Swift had name-checked on her chart-topping album The Tortured Poets Department.

That overlap — Russell inhabiting Thomas’s world on stage, while Swift brought him into her lyrical universe — only tightened their cultural bond.

A Night of Hidden Connections

Swift’s reunion with Russell won’t be the only serendipitous moment on Fallon’s Oct. 6 lineup. The night’s musical guest is The Format, the indie band led by Nate Ruess.

Ruess later co-founded fun., the band that scored a global hit with “We Are Young.”

Fun.’s guitarist and songwriter Jack Antonoff went on to become Swift’s closest producer and collaborator, shaping the sound of 1989, Reputation, Folklore, and Midnights.

That makes The Format’s booking especially symbolic, given the buzz surrounding Antonoff’s absence from Swift’s upcoming record The Life of a Showgirl. While some fans speculated about a rift, neither Swift nor Antonoff has confirmed any fallout. Still, the coincidence of Ruess’s band sharing the bill adds an extra layer of intrigue.

Swift’s First Tonight Show Visit Since 2022

Fallon teased Swift’s return late last week with a 31-second Easter egg-filled video captioned “Not a lot going on at the moment.” Fans immediately recognized the phrase as a callback to Swift’s 2020 Instagram post, which secretly teased her surprise album Folklore.

Swift’s Oct. 6 appearance will be her first sit-down with Fallon since 2022, when she visited to promote Midnights. At that time, she played games, shared stories about her creative process, and surprised fans with anecdotes that quickly went viral.

Why This Reunion Matters

For Swift, sitting next to Russell on Fallon’s couch won’t just be another late-night interview. It’s a moment of validation — proof that the idols she once blogged about are now her peers. For Russell, it’s a chance to share the stage with one of the most influential artists of the century, someone who once saw her as the epitome of cool.

And for fans, it’s a perfect encapsulation of Swift’s career arc: the teenage MySpace blogger who adored a TV actress is now one of the biggest cultural figures alive, reuniting with that actress on a national stage.

The Oct. 6 Lineup

Taylor Swift, promoting The Life of a Showgirl (album release: Oct. 3)

Keri Russell, promoting season 3 of Netflix’s The Diplomat (premiere: Oct. 16)

The Format, performing live

Conclusion

Taylor Swift’s Oct. 6 Tonight Show visit promises to be more than just a promo stop for her new album. It’s a reunion with Keri Russell, the celebrity she once idolized and wrote about in a 2008 blog post, and a night threaded with symbolic connections to her career-long collaborators.

For Fallon, it’s another chance to host a cultural moment. For Swift and Russell, it’s a greenroom full circle almost two decades in the making. And for fans? It’s one more reason to tune in, searching for the next Easter egg in Swift’s ever-expanding universe.