Identity of Argylle author Elly Conway is finally revealed after Taylor Swift teases

Matthew Vaughn's latest film Argylle hit screens this week, but the film has had mystery surrounding it since it was announced.

That's because the book the film is based on (which was unreleased at the time the film was announced) had a mystery first-time author, that fans started to speculate was none other than Taylor Swift.

Vaughn originally stated that the book written by Conway inspired the movie and that it would be released in conjunction with the film.

Fans of Taylor Swift began speculating the pop star had become a novelist based on a series of Easter eggs, such as Swift wearing a jumper that said "Conway Studios", the fact she has previously used a pseudonym, and in All Too Well: The Short Film, Swift plays a red-haired novelist, suspiciously like Conway who is played by a red-haired Bryce Dallas Howard. For even more theories you can read our piece covering them all.

Swifties were convinced the pop star was Elly Conway - but alas they were incorrect...Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management

Unfortunately for the Swifties though, the identity of Elly Conway has been uncovered by The Telegraph, and it's not Swift.

Nope, it's actually two people: I Am Pilgrim's Terry Hayes and When She Was Bad's Tammy Cohen.

So here's what happened.

Vaughn initially wanted to adapt Hayes' I Am Pilgrim, but MGM owned the rights and "they could not do a deal with Matthew for their own bizarre reasons,” according to Hayes.

So, Vaughn decided instead to ask Hayes to write an accompanying book inspired by a movie in development, Argylle, a book that would have been like what Conway would have written in the movie. Hayes then asked Cohen to co-author the book with him, as he was still working on The Year of the Locust and the pair wrote Argylle.

Just two days ago, before their identity was uncovered, “Elly Conway” posted a photo of Hayes’s book, a smart wink to the true identity of Argylle's author. “Going back to read Terry Hayes’ debut novel, so I’m fully booked for tonight,” wrote Conway.

Back in January, Vaughn tried to warn fans not to get their hopes up about Swift being behind the novel.

Speaking to Rolling Stonehe said: “I’m not a big internet guy, and it was actually my daughter who came up to me — this is the power of celebrity and the internet — and said, ‘You never told me Taylor wrote the book!’

“And I’m looking at her going, ‘What are you talking about Taylor Swift wrote the book? She didn’t write the book!’

“And I was laughing because I was like, ‘It’s not true! She didn’t write the book!’ But my daughter was convinced of it.”

So there we have it, another mystery solved.

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