How Daniel Radcliffe tapped into his days as Harry Potter for big Weird Al scene
Portraying "Weird Al" Yankovic on screen was not on Daniel Radcliffe's bucket list.
"It was not something I could have predicted," the British actor tells EW's The Awardist podcast of playing the Grammy-winning singer and parody songwriter in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. "But that's the joy of my job, that sometimes you get something like this and go, 'Wait, what?'"
To be clear, the Roku Channel movie is not a true biopic — for starters, the Harry Potter star is some seven inches shorter than the man he plays.
"The world's first reaction to hearing that I had been cast as Weird Al was my first reaction on being offered the part," Radcliffe says of the questions surrounding the casting news. "But then as I read it, I was like, 'Oh, right, I see why this can work, why it works with me.' It was not predicted but a lovely surprise."
That surprise includes lots of fictionalization and few facts. While Radcliffe's Weird Al is still a parody songwriter, plays the accordion purchased by his family from a door-to-door salesman, and recorded "My Bologna" (a play on "My Sharona") in a public restroom on his college campus, the story — co-written by Weird Al himself along with the movie's director, Eric Appel — throws everything else out the door for an absurdly funny plot involving a relationship between Al and Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), who is kidnapped by drug lord Pablo Escobar (Arturo Castro), after which Al becomes an action hero of sorts in an attempt to save her.
"[Daniel] is such a great actor that can play both drama and comedy," Appel says of thinking of Radcliffe for the role. "Obviously he's carried a movie franchise, as the lead actor. Al and I both were big fans of his, and Al had seen Dan singing 'The Elements' song on television, on the Graham Norton Show — that's what really sealed the deal for him. But we were just such big fans of his entire body of work and felt that he would really understand what we were going for. What we really needed was him to lean into the drama of this character in an absurd way, and that's what's gonna make it really funny. He just really checked all the boxes for us."
One of the boxes, of course, was the performance aspect. In addition to that bit on Graham Norton, Radcliffe also rapped Blackalicious' "Alphabet Aerobics" on The Tonight Show, and has performed in the Broadway musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. So to take the stage as Weird Al, Radcliffe says, wasn't necessarily out of his comfort zone.
"I definitely was really relishing in it, and there was something about the environment and the costume and everything that just really helps you to commit to all of it," says Radcliffe, who elsewhere says that the trifecta of Weird Al's wig, Hawaiian shirt, and accordion was "the complete package." The performance scenes were filmed in a big theater, which encouraged him to "fill [the] space and be as big as it [is]. And we had a very game group of background [actors] who were giving me a lot off camera and were doing a lot of cheering and making it feel like a concert."
Radcliffe also got to tap back into his 10-plus years spent on the set of the Harry Potter movies for a pivotal action scene at a diner, where Escobar's men capture Madonna just after Al has confessed that he's hitting rock bottom and doesn't know what he'd do if anything happens to her. He jumps into action, throwing punches and metal napkin holders, flipping burly men over his shoulders, snapping dish towels, and dodging cast iron skillets like it's his job.
"The things Potter taught me about stunt work was concentrating and all of that stuff, but just putting yourself in the hands of the stunt team and working with them 'cause they know what they're doing," he says of the stunt team, including "amazing" coordinator Jake Huang and his "brilliant" stunt double Andrew Franklin. "That scene would not have happened were not for the both of them and how great they were. But yeah, it was super fun. I love getting to do that kind of stuff because I got to do so much of it on Potter. I don't get to do as much of it anymore, but I got to do a lot of it actually on this film as Weird Al."
Hear more of our conversation with Radcliffe and Appel, including his writing process with Yankovic and how they landed the movie's many cameos, in the full podcast below.
Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights leading up to all the major award shows.
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