Eddie Redmayne Admits His ‘Les Misérables’ Role Was ‘Appallingly Sung’ 10 Years Later

Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne knows not all of his roles hit a high note.

While at the Toronto International Film Festival promoting Netflix’s “The Good Nurse,” the Oscar winner reflected on 2012’s “Les Misérables” a decade after its release. Director Tom Hooper filmed the musical numbers live to recreate the emotional experience of doing a musical onstage, but Redmayne revealed he thought his singing ability was less than perfect.

“I love the frailty,” the “Theory of Everything” alum said, via Entertainment Weekly. “Technically, it’s appallingly sung, but it’s got like a fragility that helps sell the song.”

Redmayne noted that he channeled the concept of emotion over vocal accuracy after working with Robert De Niro on “The Good Shepherd,” which De Niro directed.

“De Niro has this process where he’s filming, and you’d do a take, an emotional take, and then he would stop you and get you to go back and start again, and take the accumulation of that emotion and repress that and fire that back into the start of a scene,” Redmayne shared. “And that’s what we did here on this piece eventually.”

For “Les Misérables,” Redmayne noted that director Hooper sought five to six takes per scene, but Redmayne was determined to keep shooting.

“I’m going to go until I can’t go anymore,” Redmayne said of the shoot. “Because at least when you’re not happy with what you end up seeing, you know that you went for it. We did that there. We did push it pretty far.”

Co-star Anne Hathaway won an Oscar for her role opposite Redmayne, while fellow cast member Amanda Seyfried similarly sought to showcase her singing chops post-“Les Mis.”

“Ever since ‘Les Mis,’ I was like, I need to be better. I need to do better,” Emmy winner Seyfried explained earlier this year about auditioning for “Wicked” and feeling the need to “prove” her vocal ability. “So whatever comes next in terms of musicals, I’m finally prepared.” Seyfried added that it was “devastating” to not be cast as Glinda the Good Witch in Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked” musical adaptation. The role ultimately went to singer Ariana Grande.

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