Daniel Radcliffe claims that Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is the strangest role he has taken on. Though he is only 33 years old, Radcliffe has now been a Hollywood star for decades. He rose to prominence at the age of 12 when he played the iconic role of Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and for years the Harry Potter series consumed most of Radcliffe’s career. Since then, he has broken out into other roles, including parts in Horns, Trainwreck, Now You See Me 2, and now, with Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a comedic biopic about parody songwriter Weird Al Yankovic.
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While many of Radcliffe’s films have been in the mainstream, he does have one credit to his name that is a far cry from the others: Swiss Army Man. Swiss Army Man is a 2016 film directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the filmmaking duo behind Everything Everywhere All at Once known collectively as Daniels. Swiss Army Man is a film that defies genre description, the plot of which is perhaps one of the most out-there that there has ever been. Swiss Army Man stars Paul Dano as a man who is stranded on a deserted island, and befriends none other than a dead body played by Radcliffe. But rather than being inanimate, this multipurpose, aggressively flatulent corpse is magically conscious and accompanies Dano’s character as he finds his way home.
Now, Radcliffe says that Weird beats out even Swiss Army Man as the strangest thing he has ever done. In a recent interview with Empire, Radcliffe uses an intriguing set of descriptors to define Yankovic himself, saying that the singer “manages to thread the needle between wholesome and genuinely weird” and that “he can be childishly surreal.” He points to a specific “scene involving and LSD trip” within Weird: The Al Yankovic Story that is particularly odd. Check out the full quote from Radcliffe below:
I travelled with an accordion so much for this film, and had this major fear of going through security and them suspecting it was a bomb. You know, to prove it's not an explosive. Do you know how stressful that would be?! It's a very difficult instrument to play!
[…]
The thing that's so fascinating about Al is that he manages to thread the needle between wholesome and genuinely weird. He can be childishly surreal, with a real edge of madness and danger to him. There's one scene involving an LSD trip that's probably the most bizarre thing I've ever done. And that's saying something… [I love] films where, if you can justify it in the script, you can do anything. You can have a guy with guns for hands or a dead corpse with magical powers. We can do whatever we like. Why not go weird?"
Just How Weird Will Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Get?
Even from Radcliffe’s initial airport anecdote, Weird seems like it will be a classically odd film. By featuring the accordion so heavily, the movie will lean into what makes Yankovic’s real music unique in the first place, and saying that the LSD scene tops even Swiss Army Man in its oddity is quite the statement. With an already idiosyncratic central protagonist, played by an actor who has learned to embrace strange projects, Weird: The Al Yankovic is sure to deliver an impressively eccentric final product. This approach has the potential to be embraced by fans who agree with Radcliffe’s final sentiment: “Why not go weird?”
Radcliffe’s recounting of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is not the only reason to believe that the biopic will be immensely off-kilter. Co-star Evan Rachel Wood recently mentioned that she was told to play Madonna “on a lot of cocaine” in the film. Other iconic figures will be portrayed, including Oprah Winfrey (played by Abbott Elementary's Quinta Brunson), Hulk Hogan (James Preston Rogers), David Bowie (Gordon Tarpley), and drag queen Divine (Nina West). With all of these figures, likely caricatured, at play, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a film bound to have all kind of memorable scenes and moments.