Jake Gyllenhaal Good Morning America Bad Blood Introduction

(Image credit: Getty)

published 23 July 15

Update, 7/23: Underestimating Good Morning America's destructive potential, Jake Gyllenhaal told Howard Stern (opens in new tab) on Wednesday that he did not believe he had been shaded when the show introduced him to ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood."

"First of all, I did not hear that," he said, reminding himself that the strike would have failed if he pretended not to notice because self-awareness is the crux of shade. "When I'm doing an interview when you're up at 5 a.m. and you can't really make sense of words, you're not thinking about the background music that's playing behind you."

However, he did admit he is familiar with Tay Tay's oeuvre, inspiring vindictive teens interning at network television shows everywhere to queue up "All Too Well" during his next appearance.

Update, 7/21: Someone at Good Morning America is apparently not over Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal's breakup yet, so he used his access to the studio's sound system to express deep displeasure with an event that occurred in 2011.

As the morning chat show returned from commercial break Monday, Robin Roberts introduced the Southpaw actor while "Bad Blood" (opens in new tab) played. (For the record, Gyllenhaal is either such a skilled actor he kept all his facial features in check as he battled a torrent of guilt, or he didn't even notice. Let's go with the former.) This could, and has been (opens in new tab), construed as a deliberate act of shade made all the more masterful by its timeliness (number two on Billboard's Hot 100 (opens in new tab), yo) and subtlety ("All Too Well," (opens in new tab) which is allegedly *about* him, would have been way too on-the-nose).

So is this actually the apotheosis of shade? Or does the shadee's obliviousness to the shader's efforts disqualify it because making someone feel bad without actually saying anything outright mean is the whole point?

Results: inconclusive. But if it were me, I'd be proud of my work and offer Marie Claire an exclusive interview, knowing that their editors would treat my story with the utmost sensitivity, respect, and only the finest GIFs.

Chelsea Peng

Chelsea Peng is a writer and editor who was formerly the assistant editor at MarieClaire.com. She's also worked for The Strategist and Refinery29, and is a graduate of Northwestern University. On her tombstone, she would like a GIF of herself that's better than the one that already exists on the Internet and a free fro-yo machine. Besides frozen dairy products, she's into pirates, carbs, Balzac, and snacking so hard she has to go lie down.