Eddie Redmayne Says That Starring In “The Danish Girl” Was A Mistake
Eddie Redmayne has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Actor: one for The Theory of Everything in 2015, and a year later, for The Danish Girl. Both of the roles were based on real-life people, and he won for The Theory of Everything. Well, it sounds like he’s thankful he didn’t win for The Danish Girl. Because at the very least, his performance as a real-life transwoman in The Danish Girl wasn’t immortalized forever with a little engraved statue. Six years after the film was released, Eddie is pretty confident it wasn’t the best idea for him to play that role.
The Danish Girl was a fictionalized biographical drama, based on the lives of Danish painters Lili Elbe (played by Eddie) and Gerda Wegener (played by Alicia Vikander, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in 2016). It focuses on their marriage and Lili’s subsequent gender confirmation surgery in Germany in the 1930s. When it was announced that Eddie had been cast in the role, a whole lot of cynical people got a skeptical kind of feeling deep down in their souls. Others rolled their eyes at Hollywood and accused The Danish Girl’s casting of a straight cis actor as the star of being deeply insulting and tacky. At the time, Eddie acknowledged the backlash, but also kind of explained that it’s not like there weren’t any trans actors in the movie and that he sort of got a blessing to do the film from Lana Wachowski (who directed him in Jupiter Ascending). Plus, he felt like he was shining a light on a trans narrative, and that’s good, right? Well…yeah, he’s changed his mind about all that.
Eddie recently spoke to The Times about appearing in a new stage production of Cabaret in London. And should he go back in time to 2015, he’s certainly not taking the role of Lili Elbe. via Deadline:
“No, I wouldn’t take it on now. I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake,” he said. “The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don’t have a chair at the table. There must be a leveling, otherwise we are going to carry on having these debates.”
His stance on the matter has clearly changed, and it’s not known if it’s just the nature of the progression of time or the fact that he has seen firsthand how shitty things still are for members of the trans community. But I bet that The Danish Girl isn’t the only role Eddie would turn down if he was given a cosmic do-over. No, I’m not about to make a Jupiter Ascending joke, that movie rules. I’m implying that he’d probably turn down the lead role in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Between the ongoing headache that is his professional relationship with J.K. Rowling, the messy PR nightmare that was Johnny Depp’s departure and subsequent recasting, and the dumb wand-waving and goofy spells, is the paycheck even worth it?
Pic: YouTube