ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Daniel Radcliffe and Evan Rachel Wood about the film’s wacky tone and its makeout scenes. The film is set to stream on The Roku Channel on November 4.
“The biopic holds nothing back, exploring every facet of Yankovic’s life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like ‘Eat It’ and ‘Like a Surgeon’ to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle,” reads the synopsis. “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story takes audiences on a truly unbelievable journey through Yankovic’s life and career, from gifted child prodigy to the greatest musical legend of all time.
Tyler Treese: Daniel, how was it actually learning to play the accordion for this role? The scenes look great.
Daniel Radcliffe: Thank you! Then it was all worth it. It was really hard, but it was great. I’m lucky enough to have a friend who is self-taught on the accordion and has like three spares lying around, so he just gave me one to have for a long time. It’s really difficult, but I learned as much as I needed to to play those bits of those songs. There was one moment where I had learned one song on the right hand and Al came up to me as we were doing it for the first time, [and] was like, “that’s all on the left hand,” where I almost lost my mind for a second. Other than that, it was great. And Evan got to listen to me practice!
Evan Rachel Wood: Yes, we shared a trailer, so I got to hear the accordion practice all day.
Daniel Radcliffe: So she knows exactly how good I am.
Evan Rachel Wood: Yes, it was! It didn’t bother me, really. It felt quite fitting.
Evan, you’re so great as Madonna, and it had to be a blast portraying those iconic looks of hers and I know you have a great cover band. So what was the biggest thrill of playing this over-the-top early version of Madonna?
Evan Rachel Wood: Oh, so fun. I have such a love of that time in the 80s like so many people do. I grew up listening to Madonna and it, weirdly, made sense that I was getting tapped to play her because I would dress up like her when I was a kid. So we had so much fun. I mean, during the fittings, we’re blasting the music. I watched hours of her interviews, [and] loved every minute of it. Then [I] got to come in and bring all the research that I had done and just let it fly off the handle in this really weird way . So it worked.
Daniel, it’s just so brilliant that a biopic on a parody musician is a parody of biopics. So how freeing was it to be in these super dramatic scenes, but you could play so fun and loose with them?
Daniel Radcliffe: Eric [Appel, director of the film] talked to me early on about [how] the tone he wanted for the film was that “the situations are insane and the scenes will be ridiculous, but you guys — particularly the main five actors — you guys need to play it absolutely for real and seriously. If you are starting to be self-aware, winking at the camera kind of stuff, then the whole thing falls apart.” There was something very freeing about playing a biopic where you are not beholden to accuracy. It means that you can really inject a lot of whatever you kind of feel is useful or fun into the character. I think there’s some stuff in this character that’s absolutely Al, like the earnest sweetness that he has. But then he turns into a vastly different person at some point.
Evan, you and Daniel have some intense makeout sessions in the film. You’re breaking objects in the house. It’s so ridiculous. How is it filming those scenes?
Evan Rachel Wood: Those were the first scenes that we filmed.
Daniel Radcliffe: Yes. “Nice to meet you.”
Evan Rachel Wood: Yeah! We had a lovely dinner the night before, which was a very sweet of Daniel and Eric to do so that we could at least sort of shake hands and say “hi” before our first day of filming where we were literally knocking over statues, crawling all over each other. At one point we had to knock off a picture from the wall that was a painting of Daniel as an angel cherub baby. It was just the most … it was perfect because it was the weirdest day ever and the weirdest way to get to know somebody.
Daniel Radcliffe: But it was kind of great. It was kind of great to just get in and be like, “okay we’re doing this makeout scene,” but also made slightly less awkward by A.) The fact that you are game and don’t care, but also the fact that we are slamming against walls. It was very funny.
Evan Rachel Wood: And what was really funny was watching playback because we are dressed like Weird Al and Madonna, so when you watch playback, it really looked like Weird Al was making out with Madonna and so we were all just laughing hysterically, like the whole thing. We laughed a lot.
Daniel Radcliffe: Yeah, on the set, absolutely.
