Daniel Radcliffe has revealed why he isn’t singing in the upcoming parody biopic, Weird: The Story of Al Yankovic. Made famous by Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the actor has had a long and successful career in both mainstream and independent cinema to date, including gems such as The woman in black, horns, and jungle. He has also been known to take himself a little less seriously and take on roles in Rifles Akimbo and The Lost City. One of the strangest projects in Radcliffe’s filmography has to be: swiss army man, though the actor recently revealed that playing Weird Al might be weirder than being a magical fart corpse.
Coming to the Roku Channel on November 4, Weird: The Story of Al Yankovic tells the story of Al’s life as he rockets to stardom and makes satirical parodies of popular songs. As revealed in the trailers so far, this contains his inspiration for his hit Like a surgeon which comes from the mind of a very exaggerated version of Madonna played by Evan Rachel Wood, with the implication that the two did a little more than just write songs together (this part of the film is fictional as in real life they never actually have dated, but Madonna did come up with the original concept for Al’s song). Also starring Rainn Wilson, Weird: The Story of Al Yankovic has received positive reviews since its premiere on TIFF, suggesting the biopic could become a huge success upon general release.
In an interview for Empire, Daniel Radcliffe discussed the fact that his singing talent will not be featured in the film. Although the actor sang live during the production, his voice is dubbed by the actual song curator Weird Al Yankovic. This is simply due to the fact that he cannot physically reach Al’s reach. He went on to comment:
“I remember asking, ‘Should I sing? Because I can sing, but not in Al’ Eric’s register [Appel, director] was like, you’ll be lip syncing all the way through.’ We wanted to laugh at the trope of a famous actor who starred.”
Weird Al Yankovic heard Daniel Radcliffe sing live
While audiences won’t be able to hear Radcliffe’s soft tones, Weird Al Yankovic was on set almost every day, listening to the actor blast his hits live. This was quite an intimidating feat for Radcliffe as he performed for the creative genius behind so many well-known parodies such as Amish Paradise and Eat it. Yankovic seemed to approve, however, as he regularly laughed on set and had a fantastic time watching his own exaggerated history come to life before his eyes. The trailers featuring Radcliffe performing as Al show how wild, wacky and a little out of control will go.
With this highly anticipated movie coming soon, there is a guaranteed sense of joy surrounding it. Although it is only loosely based on the events of the artist’s life, Weird: The Story of Al Yankovic looks set to be a fun ride, with humor, drama and plenty of familiar songs that will have audiences humming for days after watching. Even the advertising for this movie turns out to be a parody, with one of the latest posters released by Roku being the perfect parody of one promoting Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018. Unfortunately, audiences won’t hear Radcliffe’s rendition of Al’s songs as they did with Rami Malek (to some extent) when he played Freddie Mercury, but sometimes the only voice suitable for the performance is the original artist.
Source: Empire Magazine
