WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY Creative Team Says Daniel Radcliffe's Performance Blew Them Away

The comedy biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story was released last week to rave reviews. Critics are enjoying it, and fans are liking it even more. Weird Al Yankovic has been a staple in the music industry since the ‘80s and has a huge fanbase worldwide, so a movie about the star is bound to do well, but Yankovic and the film’s director, Eric Appel, took a risk with this story. The “biopic” is more of an embellished what-if story, imagining a wilder Yankovic with the checkered past of a rock star, instead of the mild true story of a family man who everyone loves, which would be true, but less exciting.

Another gamble was the casting of Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe in the role of Yankovic. Some fans were confused by the choice, but it has proven to be the right one. In a recent interview with Uproxx, Al Yankovic explained that he and director Eric Appel both believed that, despite his lack of resemblance, Radcliffe was perfect for the role.

"Eric Appel and I came up with a list of about a half a dozen or so people that we thought, oh, these people would probably be good in the role. And we both just kept gravitating toward Daniel's name. We just thought that he would get it. We knew that he was great at comedy, and he was also great at drama. And we need both for this movie, because it's a comedy obviously, but we need it to play like it's some extremely serious Oscar-bait Hollywood biopic. And we knew that Daniel would really focus into that tone and really get what we were going for."

In an interview with /Film, Appel talked about Radcliffe’s performance, saying:

"To the extent of how good his performance was, that kind of blew me away. I'd hoped that it would be great. And I was confident that it would be great. But until you see it on its feet, my God. I remember sitting behind a monitor and there's this take, and Dan has tears in his eyes in this scene, and Al and I are turning to each other and we're just like, 'What do we... I mean, I don't know. We didn't expect this.'"

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is currently streaming on Roku. Have you seen it yet? What did you think of Radcliffe in the role of Weird Al?