Austin Butler tells how he was cast for the role of Elvis Presley in the movie Elvis.
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If you are wondering what is the name of the actor who makes Elvis in the film 2022 of Baz Luhrmann, know that this is Austin Butler, born in 1991 and that on August 17th he will blow 31 candles. Read on if you want to find out how and why he was chosen to play Elvis Presley.
A movie about Elvis was in the destiny of the American actor Austin Butler: one Christmas, in Los Angeles, he found himself singing Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas”. Since that time, there have been several songs by the king of rock ‘n’ roll that Austin loved to sing on the piano, so much so that a friend confided that he would be perfect in this role. Two days later, his agent offered him to participate in the casting of Baz Luhrmann’s new film about Elvis.
Austin Butler is Elvis Presley
AUSTIN BUTLER as Elvis in Warner Bros. Pictures’ drama “ELVIS,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Photo by Hugh Stewart
“I gave up everything to get the role. I was almost obsessed with Elvis: I started reading and seeing everything I could about his life, his friends and relatives. I only listened to his music. Before the auditions even started, I sent Baz a video of playing the piano and singing Unchained Melody»- says Austin Butler
When he was finally able to meet Baz in person, Butler says he found that “Baz is an extraordinary human being. We got on right from the start, and we started a process that lasted many months in which we would work and jot down ideas»Until finally the day of the official screen test arrived. Surprisingly, the actor confesses:
“I thought I had failed. I had three songs prepared, but Baz changed them at the last moment. In hindsight, I’m sure he put me to the test, to see how I would behave under pressure, but at that moment I thought I definitely disappointed him “
On the contrary, when a few days later the phone call arrived with the confirmation of having obtained the part, Butler recalls:
«I felt the weight of responsibility. Every day I was assailed by anxiety, because I wanted to do justice to the character and his family, to pay homage to him and his life.. It was hard not to feel like a child in his father’s suit, as if I had to wear shoes bigger than me that I would barely be able to walk in “
To internalize Elvis’s physicality, Butler adds:
“I trained with movement coach Polly Bennett both before and during the shoot,” he says. “Not only did she help me swing like he did, but she also helped me figure out how to make a person move that way”
But speaking and singing in the unique way of this musical icon was the real key to the roleand therefore the actor was joined by several vocal coaches, “because the voice and the dialect are very important. And Elvis’s voice has changed over the years“.
Baz Luhrmann observes:
“We were faced with a very simple technical challenge: almost all the Elvis recordings before say, from the 60s, all those classic tracks from the 50s are mono recordings; you can’t actually separate the voice from the band, which is one of the key things you have to do for a movie. Beyond the technical aspect these recordings, while fascinating and deeply familiar, do not capture the shocking and raw experience of the young Elvis live on stage. In the early days, Elvis felt like an original punk rocker. This meant that we would have to create the sound.
Fortunately Austin was able to sing like the Elvis of that era, a kind of rock and roll punk. At the same time, Austin’s job was to show Elvis out of the spotlight, the man sitting at the piano sadly singing ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’. The private Elvis emerges and, above all, his humanity and his spirituality. While respecting the tribute to the artist, this was a fundamentally different job: acting through a song rather than impersonating an icon “
The director eventually found a solution, working with both Butler’s voice and the original:
“In the pre-60s part of the film, it’s Austin’s voice, and it occasionally merges with Elvis’s. Whereas in the great and iconic performances of the star’s last years, only the voice of Elvis is necessarily heard“.
Elvis is currently in programming in Italian cinemas.