Voicemails for Isabelle director wrote to Taylor Swift to beg for song use

Voicemails for Isabelle director Leah McKendrick wrote letters to Taylor Swift and Robyn to ask permission to use their songs in her film.

The Netflix movie, starring Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson, has been eight years in the making, with Leah opening up about the process to Deadline.

In the interview, Leah admitted that the score for the film was so vital that she went to great lengths to convince some of the music industry’s biggest names to let her use their tunes in the film.

One letter saw her write to Taylor to ask if she could use Marjorie - which the singer penned about her grandmother’s death - to illustrate what Zoey’s Jill is going through following the death of her sister.

She explained: “I write a lot of letters. It’s very important to me. I don’t have [alternative]s with my music. I write my scene to my song. When it’s a list of one, you have no choice but to fight and beg. I said that to Taylor, I said that to Robyn. I said ‘There’s no other song.’ When I was at the Eras tour, I cried [to Marjorie] holding other Swifties, and it was a spiritual experience for me.

I cannot live without this song, and Netflix knew that as well, and luckily for me, Netflix is a bunch of Swifties too, so everybody was fighting with me, and she was very generous in giving me that and

New Year’s Day.”

Leah also penned a letter to Robyn, in a bid to get permission to use Dancing On My Own.

She recalled: “I made her a deck, I wrote her a letter, and I explained, ‘This isn’t like a needle drop. This is a character. You are a character in my film. It’s not just a song, it is Robyn.

“I really do think that musicians, they’re artists like me, I am a filmmaker. It’s a beautiful relationship because I’m a fan of theirs, just like the audience, and I want to give my audience the most epic cinematic experience, and that involves music.”