For several days after the Golden Globes, one short clip of Leonardo DiCaprio dominated social media feeds.
In it, DiCaprio can be seen mid-ceremony, leaning forward, gesturing animatedly, and speaking with a level of enthusiasm that fans rarely associate with the famously understated actor.
The problem? No one could work out who he was talking to or what about.
As armchair lip-readers got to work, one theory quickly rose to the top: DiCaprio was passionately discussing KPop Demon Hunters, a surprise favourite on the night.
And for a brief, glorious window, Teyana Taylor appeared to confirm that theory and place herself right at the centre of the moment.
Taylor, who had just won Best Supporting Actress in a Film for One Battle After Another, the night’s biggest film winner, addressed the viral speculation in an interview with Access Hollywood.
Asked whether she might have been DiCaprio’s mystery conversation partner, she didn’t shut it down.
‘The crazy part about it is, I’m so blacked out from that day,’ she admitted. ‘I want to say we may have been talking about KPop Demon Hunters, because I was so happy when they won.’
‘My kids love KPop Demon Hunters,’ she explained. ‘So, I was over there just jamming, and I think he just caught me jamming and that’s when we started talking about it.’
But any hopes of a neat explanation were immediately undercut by Taylor’s honesty about how little she actually remembers.
‘I just don’t remember what he was saying,’ she laughed. ‘I don’t even think I really even heard what he was saying. I probably was just laughing and kiki-ing back and had no clue what he was saying.’
Still, the internet ran with it. Taylor herself acknowledged she was happy to ‘go right with the lip-reading lady’, whose TikTok breakdown of the clip has since amassed around 35 million views, with a further 33 million views on Instagram. For a moment, the mystery felt solved.
Then came the plot twist.
Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Taylor revealed she’d since made a phone call to DiCaprio himself and discovered she may have jumped the gun.
‘Yesterday I thought I broke the Da Vinci code, right?’ she joked, before explaining that she ‘had to call Leo’ to clear things up.
What she learned only added to the absurdity. ‘I knew exactly what KPop was because Chase [Infiniti] taught me,’ Taylor said, referring to her co-star in One Battle After Another. ‘So I was like, “you can’t be talking to me — were you talking to me, because I already told people you were talking to me?”‘
DiCaprio’s response? Apparently, ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ was a recurring topic for him that night. ‘He was like… so apparently he had two KPop Demon Hunters conversations that night!’ Taylor revealed. ‘KPop Demon Hunters was just in his mouth all night!’
She continued: ‘I was like, “who else is you kiki-ing with like that? Because literally that’s how we kiki!”’ she said. ‘I had a little friendly jealousy!’
The final answer, though, was the least satisfying of all for internet detectives. DiCaprio, according to Taylor, doesn’t even know who he was talking to in the viral clip.
And while the mystery remains unresolved, Taylor’s trajectory is starting to feel a little more certain.
Her Golden Globe win marked a major milestone in her acting career, and she’s now widely tipped for an Oscar nomination.
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