Perhaps the breakup that has followed Taylor Swift and Katy Perry longer than any of their exes is the end of their friendship in the 2010s. After becoming industry pals more than a decade ago, a rift over some backup dancers led to a handful of perceived diss tracks, thinly-veiled interview comments, and one common ex-boyfriend.
But 2018 brought a literal olive branch and 2019, an appearance from Perry in Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video. Could 2020 be the year we finally get the long-rumored musical collaboration between them? Ahead, relive Swift and Perry’s longstanding relationship through all of its ups and downs.
September 2008: Swift and Perry were photographed together for the first time, alongside Miley Cyrus, on the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards red carpet. Both singers were on the rise at the time, following the release of Perry’s sophomore album, One of the Boys and two months before Swift’s second album, Fearless.
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February 2009: A few months later, the pair posed together again at a Grammy event honoring Clive Davis in Beverly Hills.
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They sat at the same table as Cyrus during the event on February 7. At the Grammy Awards that year, Perry was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance for “I Kissed a Girl.”
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July 2009: How long have fans been awaiting a duet between Perry and Swift? Since July 6, 2009, when Swift praised Perry in a now-deleted tweet, per People. Swift wrote, “Watching the ‘Waking Up in Vegas’ video. I love Katy Perry. I think I’m going to hang her poster on my wall now.” Perry responded by tweeting, “You’re as sweet as pie! Let’s write a song together about the subject we know best… for my new record. It’ll be brilliant~.”
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October 2009: Though they never did that duet, the pair continued to spend time together. On October 25, Swift tweeted about attending Perry’s birthday celebration.“@Katyperry knows how to throw a birthday party! I would even go as far as to say it was party-licious. Best EVER. Happy bday, pretty girl!!” she wrote.
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January 2010: Swift and Perry were spotted hanging out again at a Grammy event honoring Doug Morris on January 30. That year, both artists were nominated for Grammys at the awards show, where Swift would win Album of the Year for Fearless.
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Swift also posed alongside Perry’s then-fiancé Russell Brand. At the time, Swift was linked to John Mayer, whom Perry would go on to date in 2012, following her divorce from Brand.
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March 2010: Perry openly praised Swift’s songwriting skills in an interview with Nylon magazine, via People. “Sometimes, I really feel like I’m more of a Taylor Swift,” she said. “She tells stories, and I think that’s why she resonates with a lot of people. She hits the hidden chord in them [where they say], ‘Oh my God, I’ve been through that too,’ or, ‘You said it in a way I could never explain.'”
April 2010: Long before celebrities regularly showed up on stops of Swift’s 1989 tour, she invited Perry to duet with her onstage. The pair performed Perry’s “Hot n Cold” during Swift’s Fearless tour. In a now-deleted tweet, per People, Swift wrote, “Surprise guest at Staples Center: @katyperry!! We sang Hot N Cold and jumped up and down a lot. Katy! LA! I will always love you!”
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October 2010: With the release of Swift’s third album, Speak Now, came the confessional song “Dear John.” It was reportedly penned about her ex Mayer with lyrics such as, “Dear John, I see it all, now it was wrong / Don’t you think 19 is too young to be played by your dark twisted games, when I loved you so?”
Mayer referred to the track as “cheap songwriting” in an interview with Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone‘s Rob Sheffield later called it “a slow-burning, methodical, precise, savage dissection of a failed quasi-relationship,” while naming it one of Swift’s top 10 songs of all time.
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November 2011: About a year later, things were still going strong between Perry and Swift. Perry responds to a tweet about Swift’s new cat, Meredith, writing, “OH MY GOSH. Is this kitty for real?!?!”
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Swift reportedly responded, “@katyperry YES! And currently chasing her own tail. PS I miss you!”
That same month, Swift beat Perry for the 2011 American Music Awards’ Artist of the Year. But the musicians showed no hard feelings, posing at different points of the night with Selena Gomez and Nicki Minaj.
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August 2012: Perry began dating Mayer around this time, more than two years after Swift. Their relationship started the same year that conflict between Perry and Swift brewed.
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February 2013: Six months later, Swift and Perry ran into each other at the 2013 Grammy Awards. As evidenced by a photo, things between the pair seemed outwardly fine, although Perry attended the show with Mayer.
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December 2013: But by the end of the year, rumors swirled that the former friends were now foes. In an interview with Australia’s The Examiner, dancer Lockhart Brownlie says he and two of Perry’s other former dancers left Swift’s Red tour in 2012 for Perry’s Prism tour. Brownlie explained that he had toured with Perry before in 2011, so when Perry’s people reached out, he agreed to jump ship.
“Obviously we were with Katy for two and a half years, she’s like family to us,” he told the outlet. “So we were, like, ‘Absolutely.’ We weren’t really dancing in Taylor’s tour anyway, so I had got a little bored, and I really wanted to do a promo tour.” He added, “Taylor is very untouchable. When we did see her, we had so much fun with her, but she’s a lot more protected than Katy.”
September 2014: It wasn’t until another interview nine months later by one of the parties involved that the feud really got moving. Ahead of the release of 1989, Swift spoke to Rolling Stone. During the cover interview, she’s asked about the inspiration for the song “Bad Blood” and she alluded to a rift with another celebrity:
“For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, ‘Are we friends, or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?’ She did something so horrible. I was like, ‘Oh, we’re just straight-up enemies.’ And it wasn’t even about a guy! It had to do with business. She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I’m surprisingly non-confrontational–you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It’s awkward, and I don’t like it.”
The day after the interview was released on September 8, Perry tweeted, “Watch out for the Regina George in sheep’s clothing…,” referring to the villainous Mean Girls character. People basically connected the dots that Swift was speaking about Perry in the interview.
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January 2015: Perry addressed rumors for the first time officially in a Billboard cover story. When asked if the tweet was about Swift, she said only, “If somebody is trying to defame my character, you’re going to hear about it.”
May 2015: On May 17, the “Bad Blood” music video premiered. It featured a long list of Swift’s squad members, including Gigi Hadid, Karlie Kloss, and Selena Gomez in a dark wig with bangs that some suspected to be a Perry reference.
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A few days later, Swift attempted to shut down talk of the conflict. “I’m not giving them anything to write about,” she told The Telegraph. “I’m never going to talk about her in my interview. It’s not going to happen.”
July 2015: Swift got into another dispute when the 2015 MTV VMAs nominations dropped. Nicki Minaj fired off a few tweets about her videos for “Feeling Myself” video not receiving any nominations and her “Anaconda” video not being up for the Video of the Year category. “When the ‘other’ girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture they get that nomination,” she wrote in one tweet. “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year,” she wrote in another.
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Swift interpreted this as an attack on her video for “Bad Blood,” replying in a now-deleted tweet, “I’ve done nothing but love & support you. It’s unlike you to pit women against each other. Maybe one of the men took your slot..” Minaj responded, “Huh? U must not be reading my tweets. Didn’t say a word about u. I love u just as much. But u should speak on this.” Then Swift left things on a positive note, tweeting, “If I win, please come up with me!! You’re invited to any stage I’m ever on.” (They later performed together onstage at that year’s ceremony.)
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But while things were squashed between Swift and Minaj, Perry chimed in with her own thoughts on the Twitter exchange. “Finding it ironic to parade the pit women against other women argument about as one unmeasurably capitalizes on the take down of a woman…” Perry tweeted. “Couldn’t have said it better…,” Camilla Belle, Joe Jonas’s ex and the rumored target of Swift’s 2010 song “Better Than Revenge,” replied to Perry’s tweet.
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Days later, one of Swift’s backup dancers dressed as a shark during a performance of “Bad Blood.” This was perceived as a slight to Perry, as some of her Super Bowl halftime show dancers dressed as sharks.
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October 2015: But in the fall of 2015, Swift still refused to confirm that “Bad Blood” was about Perry. “You’re in a Rolling Stone interview, and the writer says, ‘Who is that song about? That sounds like a really intense moment from your life.’ And you sit there, and you know you’re on good terms with your ex-boyfriend, and you don’t want him—or his family—to think you’re firing shots at him. So you say, ‘That was about losing a friend,'” she told GQ.“And that’s basically all you say. But then people cryptically tweet about what you meant. I never said anything that would point a finger in the specific direction of one specific person, and I can sleep at night knowing that. I knew the song would be assigned to a person, and the easiest mark was someone who I didn’t want to be labeled with this song. It was not a song about heartbreak. It was about the loss of friendship.”
February 2016: Then there were rumors that Swift and Perry would reconcile. Perry threw a pre-Grammys event with Spotify and said she had invited Swift when asked by The New York Times. “It’s just up to their schedules,” Perry said when asked if Adele or Swift, who had both pulled their music from Spotify, would attend. In the end, neither showed up.
May 2016: Reports suggested a hangout between Selena Gomez and Perry’s current boyfriend Orlando Bloom could be more than friendly. But Perry swiftly shut down the gossip, instead tweeting about Bloom’s charitable efforts.
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Gomez retweeted the tweet with a raised hand emoji.
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The following week, Perry’s Twitter account was hacked. Amid the tweets, one message seemingly reached out to Swift for a reunion. “Miss u baby @taylorswift13,” the tweet read.
June 2016: Then Perry announced the launch of her latest fragrance, pointedly called, “Mad Love.” Many recognized that phrase from a lyric in Swift’s “Bad Blood” (reportedly about Perry). A line in the chorus goes, “Baby, now we got bad blood/you know we used to be mad love.”
July 2016: And then Swift’s recent ex Calvin Harris weighed in on the drama. On July 13, days after Swift’s new beau Tom Hiddleston was spotted at her annual Fourth of July party, Harris fired off a series of since-deleted tweets. He also took issue with Swift’s rep confirming to People that the singer wrote his and Rihanna’s song, “This Is What You Came For” under the pseudonym Nils Sjoberg when the two were still dating.
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“Hurtful to me at this point that her and her team would go so far out of their way to try and make ME look bad at this stage though,” he tweeted. “I figure if you’re happy in your new relationship you should focus on that instead of trying to tear your ex bf down for something to do.” Then he turned his attention to Swift’s feud with Perry, writing, “I know you’re off tour and you need someone new to try and bury like Katy ETC but I’m not that guy, sorry. I won’t allow it.”
In response, Perry tweeted a gif of Hilary Clinton (whom she campaigned for in 2016) smiling, looking around, and raising her eyebrows.
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That same day she retweeted a May 2015 tweet that read, “Time, the ultimate truth teller.”
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Harris and Perry would collaborate together about a year later on the 2017 song, “Feels.”
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September 2016: Two months later, Perry randomly responded to a fan on Twitter who asked, “Will you collab with Taylor swift.” She flippantly answered, “If she says sorry, sure!”
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October 2016: The two were both spotted at Drake’s 30th birthday party in October, a bash reportedly attended by their mutual ex, Mayer. It’s unclear whether there was any interactions among the three parties, nearly all of which have songs together. (Perry and Mayer sang 2013’s “Who You Love” together, and Swift and Perry collaborated on 2009’s “Half of My Heart.”)
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Then Perry filmed herself at a Kanye West concert later that month. During West’s Inglewood, California set, Perry recorded herself dancing along to “Famous,” the controversial song that claims “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/I made that bitch famous.”
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May 2017: Things between the pair remained quiet until the release of Perry’s album Witness. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly ahead of its debut, she was asked if her new music would respond to “Bad Blood” in any way. “One thing to note is: You can’t mistake kindness for weakness and don’t come for me,” Perry offered as an answer. “Anyone. Anyone. Anyone. Anyone. And that’s not to any one person and don’t quote me that it is, because it’s not. It’s not about that. Honestly, when women come together and they decide to unite, this world is going to be a better place. Period, end of story. But, let me say this: Everything has a reaction or a consequence so don’t forget about that, okay, honey.”
A week later, Perry dropped “Swish Swish,” her apparent answer to Swift’s diss track. Nicki Minaj has a verse on the song, which is potentially a callback to her 2017 VMAs conflict with Swift. After the song’s release, Swift squad member Ruby Rose wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “I just think with everything going on in the world to go from rebranding as a political activist only to ditch it and go low.. is.. a bummer.”
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When Perry did press shortly after, she was asked about her longstanding feud with Swift. Jimmy Fallon asked Perry if the song was meant as a response to “Bad Blood” on The Tonight Show. “I think it’s a great anthem for people to use whenever someone’s trying to hold you down or bully you,” she said, per People. “It’s a liberation from all the negative that doesn’t serve you.”
But she got more candid with James Corden during her installment of “Carpool Karaoke.” “There’s a situation. Honestly, it’s really like she started it, and it’s time for her to finish it,” Perry explained. “It’s about backing dancers, there were three backing dancers. I tried to talk to her about it and she wouldn’t speak to me.”
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She continued, “I do the right thing any time that it feels like a fumble. It was a full shutdown and then she writes a song about me, and I’m like, ‘Okay, cool, cool, cool, that’s how you want to deal with it? Karma!’” When Corden asked whether their “beef would ever be off the grill” she replied, “What I want to say is that I’m ready for that BS to be done. Now, there is the law of cause and effect. You do something, there’s going to be a reaction, and trust me, daddy, there’s going to be a reaction. It’s all about karma, right? I think personally that women together, not divided, and none of this petty bulls–t, women together will heal the world.”
June 2017: On June 8, the day Perry dropped her album Witness, Swift released her entire music catalog to streaming services, including Spotify. Swift announced that she was celebrating 1989 selling more than 10 million copies, but some on social media thought the move was suspicious.
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“I am ready to let it go,” Perry told the Thrive Global podcast days later, via People. “I forgive her and I’m sorry for anything I ever did, and I hope the same from her … I love her, and I want the best for her. And I think she’s a fantastic songwriter.” She added, “Maybe I don’t agree with everything she does and she doesn’t agree with everything I do, but I just really, truly want to come together in a place of love and forgiveness and understanding and compassion.”
August 2017: In an equally suspicious move, Swift announced her sixth album Reputation on August 23. The very next day, Perry released the music video for “Swish Swish,” the song rumored to be about her feud with Swift.
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The musical chess game continued on August 28 with the release of Swift’s music video for “Look What You Made Me Do.” Her video, which premiered at the MTV Video Music Awards that Perry hosted, features a Perry-esque look from Swift. In one screenshot, she can be seen in a similar haircut to Perry’s while wearing leopard print (her fans are called the “Katy Cats”) and holding a Grammy. (Swift has won several trophies, while Perry has yet to win any.)
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March 2018: By spring of the following year, things seem to have simmered between Perry and Swift. But during an episode of American Idol, which Perry is a judge on, she threw a bit of shade. “I love Taylor Swift,” a contestant told Perry, before apologizing that Swift was their musical idol. Perry responded: “Oh, you don’t have to be sorry, I love her as a songwriter as well.”
Then fans began to speculate that Swift’s longtime friend-turned-perceived foe Karlie Kloss had opted to become friendly with Perry instead. When The New York Times asked about a falling out between herself and Swift, Kloss replied, “Don’t believe everything you read.” But Swift did not attend either of Kloss’s weddings to Joshua Kushner. However, both Katy Perry and Scooter Braun (enemies of Swift’s past and present) were in attendance at the second ceremony in June 2019.
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May 2018: There was no more fitting end to the feud of nearly five years than a literal olive branch. Swift posted a photo of the olive branch and a handwritten note from Perry to her Instagram Stories. The letter appears to begin, “Hey old friend, I’ve been doing some reflecting on past miscommunications and the feelings between us. I really want to clear the air…”
Perry reached out to Swift on May 8, the day of her first Reputation stadium tour show. “Thank you, Katy,” Swift captioned a photo of the gesture alongside a pink heart emoji.
May 2019: A source told Entertainment Tonight that “Katy planned a very personal, sweet apology and took time to write a kind note in hopes Taylor would see how much she cared about putting this behind them.” The insider continued, “Katy told friends if Taylor didn’t accept this apology, she would keep trying because she is done holding on to the past and wants to be part of the change in today’s society. She wants to set a good example for women, so she planned to never give up, if that is what it took.” Although Perry planned to take their friendship “one day at a time…this is a great start.”
The next step in their revived friendship? Supporting each other on social media. When Perry released her single “Never Really Over,” Swift added the song to her Apple Music playlist for her single, “ME!” Meanwhile, Perry liked Swift’s Instagram post announcing the addition of her new cat, Benjamin Button.
June 2019: Then, more than a year after the olive branch seen ’round the world, a plate of cookies provided in-person catharsis. Perry shared a photo of a plate of cookies with the frosted phrase, “Peace at last” alongside two icing peace signs. Swift was tagged in the post, captioned, “feels good 🧡 @taylorswift.” Perry geotagged the location of her post, “Let’s Be Friends” and Swift commented 13 pink heart emojis beneath the post.
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And that baked good get-together was followed by Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video. Perry appeared in the star-studded video as a hamburger (similar to her Met Gala after party look), while Swift was dressed as french fries.
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“This meal is BEEF-free,” Perry wrote on Instagram, which even Calvin Harris liked.
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Swift captioned her own post, “A happy meal 🍔 🍟 💗.”
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Then Swift spoke further about how the music video mea culpa came about on the U.K.’s Capital Breakfast radio show. Swift said that the pair had “been on good terms” ever since Perry sent that infamous olive branch. “We saw each other at a party and walked up to each other and hugged it out and talked about things,” Swift explained. “Then saw each other again and hung out at another party. It was just like something felt so much lighter about my life when things became really good between us.” As for letting fans know about the reconciliation she said, “We didn’t know if we were ever gonna really tell people about it. We wanted to make sure that was solid between us before we ever made the public aware.”
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July 2019: Perry offered her take on their new friendship the following month. “I just thought, you know, she was about to embark on something new and big and needed the support,” Perry told KIIS 1065’s “The Kyle and Jackie O Show about making up on the brink of Swift’s Reputation tour. “And truly, it was like, as I was finishing [my tour], I realized how much we have in common. And maybe there’s only five other people in the world that can have the same type of conversations and understand where we’re coming from, and that we should celebrate our commonality and our friendship and to be able to be there for each other.” Another key tidbit to emerge from the interview: Perry was able to meet Swift’s cat Benjamin during that cookie reunion.
September 2019: Swift also spoke about the reconciliation during an interview with Rolling Stone, the same outlet that she first spoke about the feud to. “Katy and I were talking about our signs…because we had this really, really long talk when we were reconnecting and stuff. And I remember in the long talk, she was like, ‘If we had one glass of white wine right now, we’d both be crying.’ Because we were drinking tea. We’ve had some really good conversations.”
March 2020: And while the two are on good terms, Perry told Stellar magazine that they weren’t hanging out all the time. “Well, we don’t have a very close relationship because we are very busy, but we text a lot,” Perry told the outlet. “I was impressed by her documentary [Miss Americana] because I saw some self-awareness starting to happen, and I saw a lot of vulnerability.”
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May 2020: Now, fans are convinced that Perry and Swift are releasing a duet together. Neither party has confirmed the speculation, but they haven’t exactly stopped it either. Here’s why fans are convinced “Daisies” is a Perry-Swift collaboration:
On May 8, Perry teased the first single off her forthcoming album, “Daisies.” She captioned her Instagram post, “The first single from #KP5 is called #DAISIES and she’s coming MAY 15, 2020 🌼 THE MUSIC MUST GO ON.”
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That same day, Swift posted a photo of herself in a sweater with…daisies on it. (The sweater “🍷 🐍 biiig isolation 🐍 🍷” she captioned the post.
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Then American Idol went ahead and stirred the pot by tweeting about playing Perry’s new song “1,989 times in a row.” Many interpreted this as a reference to Swift’s 2014 album, 1989.
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As for Perry’s thoughts on the rumors? “Well, you’re just gonna have to tune in to Idol next week to see all rumors, true or false,” she told Extra while promoting the show and her live performance of the song. Also worth noting: Perry will perform for the song for the first time on the American Idol finale, which leads directly into Swift’s City of Lover concert special on ABC.
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July 2020: Katy Perry called into U.K. radio show Capital FM, host Sian Welby told Perry about the fan theory that she and Taylor Swift might be cousins. At first, she said the theory was nothing more than “fan fic.” Then, when the host said this was a real theory fans had after doing research, she had a different response: “Well, we fight like cousins,” Perry said referring to their infamous feud. “Wow, I’m gonna have to ask her if this true, or if we should, like, get blood tests together…It’s cool because you can just, like, spit in a tube.”
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