Rachel Bilson Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock
Rachel Bilson and 8-year-old daughter Briar have some bad blood after leaving Taylor Swift’s concert early.
“We left [the Eras Tour] early. Briar’s friend Aria danced her ass off to ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ — she was feeling it — and then just turned around, sat in her seat and passed out,” Bilson, 41, said during the Monday, April 14, episode of her “Broad Ideas” podcast. “Everyone around us was laughing because it was so cute. Briar wanted to stay until the end but her two friends were just done. So we left early. Briar was mad about that. She was so mad.”
Bilson went on to share that her stepdad and brother only made matters worse when they teased Briar about sticking around until the end of the show. “[They] were like, ‘Did you stay until the end? The last song?’ And Briar was like, ‘I wanted to!’ I was like, ‘You guys, cut it out, please stop talking about it!’” Bilson recalled, laughing.
Swift, 33, wrapped up the first leg of the Eras Tour on Wednesday, August 9, after kicking things off in March. The show, which is slated to become the highest-grossing tour of all time, marked her first time on the road in five years.
“It was so rad. The concert was amazing. Taylor is f—king just, I just bow down,” Bilson, who shares Briar with ex Hayden Christensen, continued. “I am obsessed. … It was a really cool experience except that was Briar’s first concert and I’m like, ‘Where do you go from here?’”
For Bilson, exposing her daughter to a strong, successful woman was even more important than the music itself.
“For my daughter to see this, I think it’s so rad. It’s one woman, she writes her own s—t. She’s really talented and she does it and, like, look at what she’s done,” she said. “If anything is the most inspiring thing I’ve ever seen.”
Bilson added that just thinking about how excited her daughter was when Swift came on stage — and seeing the concert through an 8-year-old’s eyes — gives her “chills.”
“It was just the best thing ever. I’ll have that memory forever,” she gushed. “And even in the car yesterday I was like, ‘Was this the first song Taylor sang?’ And she’s like, ‘No mom, her first song was ‘Miss Americana.’ It was life-changing [for her].”
Bilson and Christensen, 42, dated for more than six years before welcoming Briar in 2014. Us Weekly exclusively confirmed in September 2017 that the duo called it quits after nearly 10 years together. “She’s full-time back in L.A. He’s in Toronto,” an insider told Us at the time. “They’ve been on the outs for a couple of months.”
In the years since their split, the pair have maintained an amicable coparenting relationship.
“It’s been going pretty well,” Bilson exclusively told Us in December 2020 when asked about how the exes were handling parenthood amid the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s also nice because you’re stuck in the house [because of lockdowns]. So, for her to have another house to go to, I think that’s actually been helpful. So, all in all, it’s been good.”
Briar may be dazzled by a superstar like Swift — but she doesn’t quite understand that her own dad — who portrays young Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader in Star Wars — is a larger-than-life figure in pop culture as well.
“She knows Daddy’s Darth Vader, [but] she’s never seen Daddy as Darth Vader,” Bilson said during a June 2022 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “I’m still waiting a little bit, you know, until that happens. I might show her the prequels soon, but still, there’s some scenes we might have to fast forward through.”