Taylor Swift revealed that she did a screen test with Eddie Redmayne for Les Miserables! The singer, 32, didn’t make the cut unfortunately, as the audition quickly turned to a “nightmare” experience. “Basically, I was up for two roles,” the Midnights singer said on the Oct. 28 episode episode of The Graham Norton Show, which also included Eddie. “I had the look of Cosette and the range vocally of Éponine, so it was established I was there for a good time, but not for a long time. I wasn’t going to get the role,” she explained.
taylor talking about meeting eddie redmayne during les miserables audition pic.twitter.com/tkbapeqxPq
— ivy (@ohhhhherewego) October 28, 2022
Notably, Cosette eventually went to Amanda Seyfried and Éponine was played by Samantha Barks in the 2012 film adaptation directed by Tom Hooper. “But they asked if I would like to go to London to do a screen test with Eddie, who is one of my favorite actors, and I thought, ‘This isn’t an experience I am going to get again in my life,’ so I said yes,” she went on. When she arrived to the set, however, she was put in “full 19th-century street urchin costume” that included brown teeth. “I was like, ‘You are going to do that after I meet Eddie Redmayne, right?’…But no, they made me look like death and it became a nightmare. When I met Eddie I didn’t open my mouth to speak,” she recalled.
It turns out the nerves weren’t just on Taylor’s end, who was only 22 at the time. Eddie, now 40, recalled he felt uncomfortable singing alongside Taylor and embracing at the same time, given they hadn’t met before. “I thought we would just be singing off each other — I didn’t know we would be in each other’s arms,” the Oscar winner added. “My overriding memory of it is that I had had pizza and garlic dough balls beforehand, and all I could think about was my garlic breath while Taylor was dying in my arms and I was trying to show emotion,” he hilariously said.
The film, based on the French novel by Victor Hugo, went onto win three Oscars at the 2013 Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway who played Fantine, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. It was also nominated in Best Picture, however, Ben Affleck‘s Argo took the top nod that year. Despite not making the cut, 2012 was significant for Taylor as she dropped one of her career-defining albums that year: Red, which she re-recorded last year in a new edition dubbed Taylor’s Version. During the original run, she continued releasing music into 2013 — hitting the road for a massive world tour beginning that Spring.
Taylor later went on to work with director Tom Hooper in the panned 2019 film Cats, in which she played Bombalurina. The Pennsylvania native also leant her talent to the soundtrack with the track “Beautiful Ghosts.”