Taylor Swift has strongly criticized Kim Kardashian, accusing her of psychologically damaging her and pushing her into seclusion during their prolonged feud.
Swift, 33, subtly referred to the reality star and her ex-husband Kanye West as ‘trash’.
The singer, 33, who has been named TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year, dished on the dispute that originated when West wrote a 2016 song containing vulgar lyrics about Swift.
West initially claimed that Swift had given consent for the reference, but after Swift denied it, Kim became involved. Kim released what Swift described as ‘an illegally recorded phone call’ between them, asserting that it proved Swift had, in fact, consented.
Taylor has now said that the public fallout said it felt like ‘a career death,’ adding: ‘Make no mistake — my career was taken away from me.’
Discussing the aftermath and the brutal toll that it took on her wellbeing, Taylor told the outlet: ‘You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar.’
‘That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls.’
Although she didn’t elaborate on where she moved to, Swift began dating British actor Joe Alwyn in late 2016, and it was widely rumored that she had rented a home in London in order to spend more time with him.
During that period, she all but vanished from the public eye, something that she says came as a result of the Kardashian and West fallout.
‘I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.’
Taylor’s feud with Kim and Kanye had been bubbling to the surface as early as 2009, seemingly out of the blue, when 19-year-old Taylor was at the MTV Video Music Awards, accepting the Best Female Video award for You Belong with Me.
Suddenly, in the middle of her acceptance speech, Kanye jumped on the stage, grabbed the microphone out of her hands and bellowed: ‘Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time!’