With director Eric Appel’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story streaming for free on Roku starting November 4, I recently got to speak with Daniel Radcliffe (Yankovic) and Evan Rachel Wood (Madonna) about making the extremely funny biopic. As you might expect from a script by Yankovic and Appel, the film takes Yankovic’s real life and uses it to parody the biopic genre with fantastic results. I laughed out loud so many times watching Weird and cannot recommend the film enough.

Weird also stars Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey, Julianne Nicholson as Yankovic's mother, Toby Huss as Yankovic's father, Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, Spencer Treat Clark, Dot-Marie Jones, Gordon Tarpley, Arturo Castro, James Preston Rogers, along with many other surprise appearances.

During the interview, Radcliffe and Wood talked about their reaction to reading the Weird script for the first time and seeing what Appel was going for, what it was like filming the movie in just eighteen days, their reaction to the film winning the People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness at TIFF, how they like to prepare for a big scene, and the first thing you should watch if you’ve never seen their work.

Watch what they had to say in the player above, or you can read our conversation below. For more on Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, you can read Ross’ review.

COLLIDER: I finally saw the movie and I just want to say congrats. It's fantastic.

DANIEL RADCLIFFE: Oh, cool. Thank you very much.

Sincerely fantastic. I like throwing a curveball at the beginning. If someone has actually never seen anything that either of you have done before, what is the first thing you'd like them watching and why?

RADCLIFFE: Honestly, Swiss Army Man. because throw them in at the deep end. Yeah, I think that's real. I've always said if there's one scene, if everything in my career was going to be destroyed except for one scene, the scene on the bus in Swiss Army Man, I think is the most beautiful thing that I've ever been a part of, so yeah, that.

EVAN RACHEL WOOD: The first season of Westworld. Anything, I would probably start with that because I do a little bit of everything, I think, so you get the whole range.

These are both great choices. I can't imagine what it was like reading the script for this for the first time and seeing the way it satirizes the musical biopic and just the biopic in general.

RADCLIFFE: Well yeah, it was that, it was going like "Oh not only is this a parody of musical biopics and biopics, as Al's biopic should be, but it's also incredibly good at that." It's incredibly well executed. It's incredibly thorough. They do not miss a trope, whether it's the angry father, the repressive parents, or the moment of instant inspiration when songs just... Somebody literally says the words to a song, and they start writing it immediately. It felt really like they'd had an idea and then gone "Okay, what is every single way we can delve into this?" Yeah, it was a great read.

WOOD: Yeah, it was literally just as funny on the page, and that's when I knew it was going to be great, is when I was already laughing out loud just reading it and just picturing it. I just knew it was going to be amazing.

One of the things I couldn't believe when I was researching to talk to you guys is how short your schedule was to make this movie. I'm stunned by what ended up on screen. Can you sort talk about that? That you really made this in, and I'm joking, but a day and a half and a roll of duct tape.

WOOD: Yeah.

RADCLIFFE: Yeah, kind of. Look, I love fast-moving films and things like that, so it wasn't a problem. It was just... I will say the second to last time I spoke to Eric before we started the movie, I said to him... I think he was coming on being like "It's fine. We've got 21 days to shoot it," or "We've got 20 days to shoot it. I think we can get it done at that time. It's going to be tight, but we're good." Then the next time I spoke to him, he was like "Okay, so we've just gone down to 18, but I still think it can work." At that point, I was like "Oh, I'm just fully having to trust you that that's even possible because I don't know." But it was because he was prepared. It was amazing, and everyone who was in the film was on it and prepared. It's spoiled me for other jobs in terms of what you can achieve in a short space of time.

WOOD: Yeah, I feel like Drunk History really prepared people for this film because there were a lot of similar crew members on Weird Al, and they have to shoot those episodes, all of the stuff that takes place in history in one day. It shocked me when I did that show just how much they were able to cover so quickly. When I found out that this was also Funny or Die and we had 18 days, I was like "Well if anybody can do it."

RADCLIFFE: That's... Yeah, no it's a really good point actually, that so much of the crew came from that.

WOOD: Yeah, from that. Yeah.

RADCLIFFE: There are very few people who have got that kind of experience in making things that look this good, and making them that fast.

WOOD: Exactly.

Also, the thing that I think people don't really realize is when you make a project you really never know how it's going to turn out. You could have the greatest script and the movie doesn't work. But this turned out so fantastic it won the People's Choice Award for Midnight Madness. This has to have turned out even better than you thought it was going to be going in.

WOOD: I already... It's pretty high. You can feel it when you're doing a film. I don't know, at least for me, I'm sure that's not true for everybody, but usually, you can tell on set there's a feeling, there's an energy, there's a vibe. You know it's clicking, something's working. You never know until the second you sit down and watch the movie. But we just had so much fun making it, and everybody wanted to be there, and it was such a passion project for everybody involved that it was just like "How can this not be great?" Then just seeing what Daniel was doing, I was like "We're fine."

RADCLIFFE: That's very kind. I was not sure, because I just... Because I never am, and I'm really... I find it really hard to be objective about stuff that I'm in and my own stuff in it. But yeah, it's absolutely... My expectation for the film was that it was going to come out and have not a similar reaction to Swiss Army Man. Maybe not quite that divisive, but that there would be people that would absolutely love it, and then there would be people who weren't as into it. It's been nice that so far, it's been a very positive reaction from people, and from Al fans most importantly, which is great news.

You guys have some such great scenes together as Al and Madonna. I didn't expect the relationship to go the way it did. Can you sort talk about your scenes together because there's so good but I don't want to ruin it for people.

WOOD: We laughed a lot, but not too much, because we didn't have a lot of time. We really had to hold the laughter in as much as possible. But we had a lot of fun, really.

RADCLIFFE: They're such fun, the turning point where Al just places himself completely in her, just has met her for a... Originally that was the only thing I think I missed from the original script, that didn't get... That had to be cut for time, was originally there was an extended rom-com montage.

WOOD: Montage, yeah.

RADCLIFFE: With the two of us doing all the things, and getting balloons, and doing. Then that seems to take place over weeks, and then you find out it's been like four hours.

WOOD: Yeah.

RADCLIFFE: But yeah, no, it's a very fast and tempestuous relationship.

WOOD: Yeah.

My last question for you, and I'll try to do this brief because I'm just about out of time. I love talking about the way actors to prepare for a role. If you have a big scene on a Monday morning, you know it's either emotional, or dramatic, or it's a big scene. How early on are you getting ready for that as an actor, in terms of preparing for that moment? Is it way in advance?

RADCLIFFE: Yeah, I think it varies.

WOOD: It varies.

RADCLIFFE: It could be, if there's one scene that in the film that is the thing that's kind of worried you, you might have been thinking about it for weeks and just do last minute stuff just before. But generally speaking, I suppose the weekend before, if you're on a Monday, that'll be enough time to sort out whatever you're going to be doing or how you're going to approach it.

WOOD: Yeah.

RADCLIFFE: But I don't know.

WOOD: I usually just know the lines as well as I possibly can. I try not to think too much about the performance, because then I'm going to psych myself out if it's a big emotional scene, or it's something I just want it to be so free-flowing on the day. It's hard for me to even do rehearsals for those scenes without having the emotion be right there. I have to hold it back a lot. But the first thing I always do when I start a project is make a playlist. I make a playlist that matches the script and the character, or the scenes that I'm doing and that becomes my sort of roadmap.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story streams on The Roku Channel for free starting November 4th.