While presenting the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year, John Travolta and Queen Latifah took the stage.
During their banter, Queen Latifah and Travolta reminisced about the last time they saw each other – during Hairspray!
“The last time I saw you, I was a woman!” Travolta said, who played Edna Turnblad, lead character Tracy’s mother.
John Travota walked so Edna Turnblad could run pic.twitter.com/fFOTqNlGtH
— Avery Brockberg (@averybrockberg) February 7, 2019
Holding the envelope with the winner’s name on it, Travolta said, “I shouldn’t do this! Because I will just mispronounce shit and f*** it up. You do it!”
Queen Latifah read the winner, and it was Taylor Swift for her video for “You Need To Calm Down.” The former country star was in complete shock and brought up several people who starred in her video to accept the award with her. Those people included singer/actor/dancer Todrick Hall, model Dexter Mayfield, YouTuber Hannah Hart, drag queens Jade Jolie, Riley Knoxx, and Adore Delano, as well as the video’s director Drew Kirsch.
As the group made their way to the stage, Travolta was tasked with handing the actual award, which is a “moon person,” to Swift – only the person he tried handing it to wasn’t Swift, but drag queen Jade Jolie who impersonates the “Lover” singer on a regular basis.
Jolie laughed as he tried to hand it to her. It was caught on camera, and it is one of the most talked about moments from the show already.
John Travolta mistaking Jade Jolie for Taylor Swift. ?DRAG ?RACE ?EXCELLENCE pic.twitter.com/zVLgsbHhD7
— Joey Nolfi (@joeynolfi) August 27, 2019
Travolta appeared on the radio station Hot 93.3 and was asked about the mishap.
He started explaining himself saying he’s known Swift for years and she’s been so nice to his daughter and his wife at her shows. He and Swift had previously exchanged notes, adding, “The first thing she did [at the VMAs] was thank me for those notes.”
Of the confusion between Swift and Jolie, he said, “There were so many people that bombarded the stage, that I was looking for her. So the video has me looking, trying to find her…I thought it was so funny the way it was interpreted. And it was cool, I didn’t care.”
He actually says he wish he would have actually confused the two.
“I sometimes fantasize, what if I had given it to her…that would have been awesome,” Travolta said. “I should have just gone all the way with it. I have a sense of humor about all of that.“
The actor knows his track record for “going viral,” and he has a great attitude about it. He sees it as, if him shaving his head, or mispronouncing a name at the Academy Awards, or trying to hand an award to a drag queen is the biggest news of the day, that means nothing really horrible in the world is going on.
“At least for today, there’s no bad news,” he said.
Watch Travolta explain it all below.