BANG Showbiz English
Weird Al advised Daniel Radcliffe how to play the accordion for the Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
The 33-year-old actor stars as the parody musician in the new biopic and was critiqued most by Al on his technique with the musical instrument, even though there was a lot of “freedom” in the fact that he is not doing a solid impersonation.
He said: “I think definitely a lot of license and freedom was given by the fact that it’s not just a straight Al biopic and impersonation. That, I think, gave me a lot of freedom to be like, okay, this is a version of this person. And I’m also really lucky that Al’s nice! And that he wasn’t sitting on set like a hawk being like, ‘Ah, you did that wrong.’ He’s very, very generous. Most of the notes that I got from him were musical, and particularly about the accordion. He was like, ‘Can you be a bit more expansive in how you’re pumping it? Because you’re a bit cautious with that,’ and he’s very expressive with it. .”
The ‘Harry Potter’ star went on to explain that the ‘White and Nerdy’ hitmaker – whose real name is Alfred Matthew Yankovic
– was “concerned” that he would make him come across “shy” on screen but found a sense of “approval” when he saw he had made the comedy songwriter laugh.
but He told Collider: “So, I think he was a bit concerned that I was gonna make him look like a shy accordionist. So yeah, there was that, but generally speaking, it was intimidating but also when you would see him laugh at something, you’d be like, ‘Okay, great! I can go home.’ It’s a very good seal of approval.”
