Earlier this year, actress and filmmaker Zoë Kravitz and her mother faced an unusual situation at Taylor Swift’s bathroom, leading to its destruction.
During an appearance on the US talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers on August 12, Kravitz shared the story of how she and her mother stayed at Swift’s Los Angeles home amid the California wildfire crisis.
As the fires raged, destroying over 12,000 properties and displacing 30,000 people, Kravitz and her mother, Lisa Bonet, found refuge at the singer’s home, which they had expected to be immaculate.
The mother-daughter pair stayed for two weeks, but an unexpected incident occurred on their last day.
“I was packing up my things and I was saying to my mom, ‘I wanna be a good houseguest. I like to leave places better than I found them. I don’t want her to even know we were here,'” Kravitz recounted during the show.
She continued, “So, I was kind of going around and cleaning up, and I’m downstairs, and she’s upstairs, and my phone rings. It’s my mom. I’m like, ‘That’s weird because we’re in the same house.’
“I answer the phone and she goes, ‘Hi,’ and I’m like, ‘Your voice is super high.’ And she’s like, ‘I’m in a little bit of a pickle. Can you come upstairs?'”
Kravitz, who had recently parted ways with fiancé Channing Tatum, followed her mother’s request and found a closed bathroom door.
“I open the bathroom door and she’s crouched in the corner in this weird way,” Kravitz, now 36, explained.
“I’m like, ‘What’s going on dude?'”
Bonet had brought along her pet snake, Orpheus, to Swift’s house.
Kravitz recounted: “And she’s like, ‘So… I was washing my face and I had Orpheus, and I just put her down for a second, closed the door, and she found this little hole in the corner.'”
The mysterious hole was situated next to a banquette built into the wall, complete with two drawers at the bottom.
“My mom’s holding the snake’s tail. They’re all muscle, they’re very, very strong,” explained Kravitz, who was understandably stressed by now.
“I don’t know what to do. I’m like, ‘OK, maybe this hole goes into the drawers.’ So I get down on the ground, I take the drawers out.
“As it’s happening, the snake is getting further and further [into the hole]. I was panicking so much that my mom likes to say, ‘If I had both hands, I would have slapped you.’ I was freaking out. I’m like, ‘Mom, I can’t bring you anywhere!'”
Fortunately, the house manager arrived just in time.
“He gets a crowbar and starts having to tear apart this banquette,” Kravitz added. “We’re ripping up the tile. We’re scratching the walls.
“Completely destroyed Taylor’s bathroom and there was this moment where I was like, ‘Either we destroy her bathroom or I have to tell her that there’s a snake somewhere in her house.'”
Although Kravitz managed to calm down and call Swift, with whom she had collaborated on the 2022 track ‘Lavender Haze’, the house manager had already informed Swift.
“We destroyed the bathroom and I said to her house manager, ‘Obviously, I’m going to pay for everything to be fixed. Please just don’t say anything until it’s fixed.’
“I remember calling her and saying, ‘Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something.’ And she’s like, ‘Is it the fact that you almost lost a snake in my house and destroyed my bathroom?'”
Meyers humorously noted: “I feel like that snake’s gonna get three songs on the next album…”