Taylor Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ Debuts in ‘Handmaid’s Tale’

Sorry, the old “Look What You Made Me Do” can’t come to the phone right now. Why? ‘Cause the song has been fully updated and re-recorded ahead of Taylor Swift’s upcoming Reputation (Taylor’s Version), and it got its premiere in the latest episode of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

The song comes at the very beginning of the new episode, which opens with the handmaids staging an uprising led by June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss) against the Commanders. Soundtracked by the revamped version of the pop star’s Reputation lead single — featuring re-creations of Jack Antonoff’s original synths and thrumming drum beat, plus a new vocal take from an older, more experienced Swift — the women of the show remain stoic as they walk in formation, with June at one point barely escaping into the back of a truck as explosions go off behind her.

Emmy-winning Handmaid’s Tale star and executive producer Elisabeth Moss tells Billboard in an exclusive statement that this musical moment has been a long time coming.

“I’ve been wanting to use a Taylor song for many years on the show and we finally found the perfect spot for a track from her, and I’m so glad we waited because there could not be a more perfect song for a more perfect moment,” says Moss, who attended a Toronto stop of The Eras Tour alongside her Handmaid’s co-star Bradley Whitford last year.

“I said to my editor, Wendy, ‘I really want to find a place for a Taylor track in the last 2 episodes of the show’ and we wanted to find a music queue for the opening of 9, and all the credit goes to Wendy for picking this track for this moment!”

Emmy-winning Handmaid’s Tale editor Wendy Hallam Martin said sometimes music synchs are just “meant to be,” as they agree this one was.

“In trying many songs for this specific moment in our series and knowing how much Lizzie wanted a strong female voice and message, Taylor was really the artist that delivered both lyrically and tonally,” Hallam Martin tells Billboard in an exclusive statement. “Our badass main character June in this scene, really was saying ‘look what you made me do’ and the song couldn’t have been more on point. A perfect pairing. When I laid the song up against the scene, it just landed perfectly thematically, rhythmically and magically hit all the edit points which sometimes happens if it’s meant to be. I shared it with Lizzie and we both knew immediately that this was the one!”

Watch the opening scene of season 6, episode 9 of The Handmaid’s Tale — and listen for the new version of “Look What You Made Me Do” — below.

The feature marks one of the first tastes of Reputation (Taylor’s Version) Swifties have gotten — and it’s a big one at that. The entire sequence includes the full first and second verses of “Look What You Made Me Do,” plus two choruses.