Twilight: New Moon director Chris Weitz has admitted he somewhat regrets his decision not to cast Taylor Swift in the series’ second film.

In a new interview on The Twilight Effect, the podcast of Ashley Greene (who starred as Alice Cullen in the film franchise), Weitz revealed that while Swift had wanted to be an extra in 2009’s New Moon, he turned the opportunity down.

“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,” Weitz said during the episode, as The Independent points out. Though it was made clear Swift only wanted to appear as “someone at the cafeteria, or the diner, or whatever,” Weitz nevertheless thought her presence in the film would be too distracting.

“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 said on the podcast. “I kick myself for it too, because – I was like, ‘Wow, I could’ve been hanging out with Taylor Swift.’”

Despite feeling a twinge of regret, Weitz added that he thought the decision was necessary for the movie. “She must have been like, ‘Who is this jerk?’ But sometimes you make decisions thinking this is for the best of the film,” he said.

Though she may not have appeared in Twilight: New Moon, Swift will appear in the forthcoming, David O. Russell-directed Amsterdam in October. A trailer for the film – which also includes Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña and Mike Myers in its star-studded cast – arrived last month.

Meanwhile, Swift’s ‘All Too Well’ short film recently qualified for Best Live Action Short nominations for the 2023 Academy Awards. Swift released the short film – which stars Stranger Things‘ Sadie Sink and Maze Runner‘s Dylan O’Brien – last November, making her directorial debut.