Taylor Swift’s Ex Shares Bloody Childhood Prank That Left His Neighbors ‘In Tears’

Joe Alwyn says his biggest childhood prank went wrong — and involved the police.

The “Brutalist” actor shared Friday on “The Drew Barrymore Show” that, decades before he dated Taylor Swift and (and possibly became the inspiration for the title of her 2024 album, “The Tortured Poets Department,”) he tortured his entire neighborhood with a bloody practical joke.

“When I was … about eight years old, I thought it would be a fun idea to prank the neighbors and I wrote some letters,” Alwyn told Barrymore. “They were prank-y, but they were of the threatening prank-y kind, and they were dipped in fake blood from a toy store.”

Alwyn, who grew up in a small town near London, sheepishly added, “I can’t believe I’m telling this,” before explaining how he and his older brother Thomas left the letters in every mailbox on his block.

He told Barrymore: “My parents got back from a dog walk and the phone rang and it was a neighbor on the phone to them saying, ‘Have you got one too?’ And me and my brother thought this was really funny, ’cause it was working! Success!”

The actor recalled him and his sibling being so giddy about the burgeoning chaos that they ran upstairs for a better view of the situation, but realized that their little prank had grown into something far more serious when police began to arrive.

“I’m not joking, this is true,” Alwyn said Friday. “The street was … quickly filled with the entire neighborhood in tears, and screaming, and worried. And, understandably, they had called the police, and Scotland Yard was on its way.”

The practical joke came to an end when three officers visited Alwyn’s home and the brothers confessed, though by that point Alwyn was sure he was going to be arrested.

“I don’t remember what the policeman yelled at me,” said Alwyn, “but they yelled.”

He left his mischievous past behind to become a professional actor, with roles in major films such as “The Favourite” (2018) and “Kinds of Kindness” (2024), and also contributed to two Swift albums during their romance from 2017 to 2023.

Alwyn, who is one of many ex-boyfriends rumored to have inspired her work, broke his silence in June about the relationship ending — and told The Times of London at the time that while he feels “good,” the breakup was a genuinely “hard thing to navigate.”

Alwyn recently wrapped an adaptation of “Hamlet” co-starring Oscar winner Riz Ahmed.