8 Things We Learned At The 'Weird: The Al Yankovic Story' Virtual Press Conference

Earlier this month, we got to attend the virtual press conference for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story moderated by Jacqueline Coley, and here are all of the major points you need to know.

Roku / 2022

Eric [Appel], to pitch this project, and say, “Hey, let's co-write this together.”, what was that process like to just sit down and start the script with Al [Yankovic]?

“This whole project started as a fake movie trailer that we made, you know, over a decade ago for Funny or Die. And I had this idea — I think it would be great to do a fake biopic trailer about a real person who is alive now and then just completely make the story up.”

Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times

Al, knowing that this story is going to be out to the fans, but also more broadly, just the idea that you could literally do it in the perfect way possible by making it a parody movie?

"I can't think of any other way that I would've done this movie, because you know, there are some interesting things that happened in my life but not anything interesting enough to make a Hollywood biopic. There are a couple moments of actual truth sprinkled in among the biopic, I did in fact, record My Bologna in a public bathroom.”

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Daniel [Radcliffe], what was it that intrigued you to it? Because I think obviously, at this point, you can do what you want. And so I think it would have to be something special, especially knowing that you're playing a real person.

"There was so much about the script that was exciting when I read it. But first and foremost, the way I try to prioritize my career now is going 'what do I think?', because it became very very obvious that this would be an incredibly fun thing to shoot."

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Evan, on top of the fact that you are incredibly hilarious, and are having so much fun as Madonna, what enticed you about playing this role?

“I've been saying this all day, who hasn't wanted to put on the early 80s Madonna get-up? I mean, it's so iconic, I never wanted to take off the wardrobe at the end of the day.

Especially with this version of Madonna, you have to make her a character to really embody her because she's not the Madonna we know. So when did she become real, and how did you craft your approach to playing her?

“I knew that if I could sort of hook the audience in the beginning, and really root that in reality, then it gave me room to later on just fly completely off the rails with her. [The fictionalization] made playing Madonna more appealing, because I think it would be too much pressure to be her in a straight biopic, although I am excited to see that. I personally don't think I could do that without having a panic attack.”

Roku / 2022

And Al, when writing a parody film, was it flexing the same muscles as writing a parody song? Or are these totally different muscles that you and Eric sort of worked out together as you were writing this?

"Writing is usually my least favorite part of my job description, but it was so fun writing with Eric [Appel]. As soon as we finished the script, I was like, 'Let's write another one right away."

Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times

Daniel, what was it like the first day you [and Al] met? Was it already that you were going to be doing this? What was that first conversation like?

“The first conversation with Al and Eric was on zoom, and then I'd send videos trying to learn the accordion and such. And then that evolved into studio sessions with Al learning the accordion, which was him letting me watch how he played certain parts. And the funny thing is that this [movie] was announced just after the Harry Potter reunion on HBO Max, and when I say that I got more texts about this than that, it's not close. It was a wide gap of interest between those two things in my life.”

Al, you've played to literally the biggest stadiums in the world. But that night [the TIFF premiere], it seemed like that was just like a very emotional evening for you in the best of ways and like the happiest ways?

“I'd seen the movie maybe 100 times on my laptop because you know, the editing process. But at the premiere, there was a whole army of Weird Als in the street while we were doing the red carpet doing a choreographed routine. That whole night was just crazy.”

That's all from the press conference, but keep an eye out for our review of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, dropping this Wednesday.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story streams on The Roku Channel on Friday, November 4.