Taylor Swift said she participated in a Les Miserables screen test with Eddie Redmayne! Sadly, the 32-year-old singer was passed over because the audition swiftly devolved into a “horror” experience. The Midnights singer said on the Oct. 28 broadcast of The Graham Norton Show, which also included Eddie, that “basically, I was up for two roles.” I was there for a lovely time, but not for very long, because I resembled Cosette and possessed Éponine’s vocal range. I wasn’t going to be given the part, she said.
Notably, in the 2012 Tom Hooper-directed film adaptation, Cosette finally went to Amanda Seyfried, and Éponine was portrayed by Samantha Barks. Even though Eddie is one of my favorite performers, I agreed to fly to London to take part in a screen test with him when they asked if I would want to, “This isn’t an experience I am going to receive again in my life,” so I said yes, she said. However, when she got to the set, she was given a “full street urchin outfit” complete with brown teeth. “You’re going to do that when I meet Eddie Redmayne, right?,” I said to you. But instead, they made me appear dead, and it turned into a nightmare.
It turns out that Taylor, who was only 22 at the time, wasn’t the only one who was nervous. Eddie, now 40, recalls how awkward it was to sing with Taylor and embrace at the same time because they hadn’t before met. “I believed we would just be singing off of one other, I didn’t know we would be in each other’s arms,” the Oscar winner admitted. “He remarked, comically, “My dominating recollection of it is that I had eaten pizza and garlic bread balls earlier, and all I could think of was my garlic breath when Taylor was dying in my arms and I was trying to portray emotion.”
Victor Hugo’s French novel served as the inspiration for the movie, which won three Oscars at the 2013 Academy Awards for Best Sound Mixing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Supporting Actress for Anne Hathaway as Fantine. It also received a Best Picture nomination, but Ben Affleck’s Argo won the award that year. Taylor released one of her career-defining albums in 2012, Red, which she re-recorded last year in a new edition entitled Taylor’s Version, even though it didn’t cut. She continued to release songs during the initial run into 2013 before embarking on a significant world tour that started that spring.
Later, Taylor collaborated with filmmaker Tom Hooper on the critically panned 2019 film Cats, in which she portrayed Bombalurina. The Pennsylvania native contributed a song called “Beautiful Ghosts” to the soundtrack as well.