Meet the Ballerina Behind Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Stupid Song’ Music Video: ‘She Was Just Down for Anything’
Categoria: Musica
New York City Ballet's Tiler Peck choreographed and danced in the video — and gave Rodrigo some good ballet gossip, too.
Por Billboard | 16/06/2026
At just eight years old, Tiler Peck made her music video debut in a particularly unforgettable way: as one of the dancing children dressed in business suits in Fiona Apple’s “Paper Bag” video, directed by none other than Paul Thomas Anderson. Nearly 30 years later, Peck has moved up to very different stages: she’s a longtime principal dancer with New York City Ballet, one of the most acclaimed ballerinas in the world, a 2026 Emmy-winner and a respected choreographer in her own right who recently premiered her second full-length work for NYCB. But while her latest major dance role does involve a tutu, it brought her back to the world of pop music. Peck choreographed and stars in Olivia Rodrigo’s “Stupid Song” video, in which the singer-songwriter wanders around New York’s Upper West Side followed by a troupe of ballerinas who cluster, pirouette and, at one point, mosh around her. The “Stupid Song” video’s director, Mitch Ryan (who directed Rodrigo’s “Obsessed” visual, as well as work for Charli xcx, Addison Rae and Rosalía) first reached out to Peck via her WME agent on the recommendation of video producer Cameron Sczempka. “I could tell within the first five minutes of the call they wanted to work with me, and I felt the same way,” Peck recalls. “Like, OK, this seems like a team that would be very collaborative. Mitch had an idea of how he wanted the video to look and feel, but he was really respectful of my knowledge of ballet and how I felt the dance should be.” At that point, she hadn’t even heard “Stupid Song” yet. “They were keeping it really tight, they didn’t want the song to get leaked,” Peck explains. Once she did get to listen, though, things moved quickly: she had roughly a week to cast her dancers (one from American Ballet Theatre, the rest her NYCB colleagues; “I was like, OK, this has the potential to show ballet in an authentic and interesting way — I’m not just pulling from a pool of dancers”) and choreograph, with one dancer temporarily standing in for Rodrigo. The shoot was one day from six to eleven A.M. — the dancers had a hard out to get to their own 11:30 ballet rehearsals. For Peck, who can’t say enough about Rodrigo as a dream collaborator, it feels like a full circle moment. “I loved working with Fiona — she was so cool,” Peck recalls of her first music video experience — which just so happened to be with one of Rodrigo’s direct inspirations. “[She and Olivia] definitely do have a similar vibe — that sort of ‘cool girl but not trying’ kind of vibe.” Peck spoke to Billboard about stopping New York City traffic for ballerinas, Rodrigo’s tutu preferences, and why t