Taylor Swift didn’t speak to Eddie Redmayne in Les Mis auditions

Taylor Swift realized that during her botched audition for the 2012 film Les Misérables, she should have, should have, or could have spoken to Eddie Redmayne.

Swift auditioned for both roles in the Oscar-winning feature film, directed by Tom Hooper, which involved her love triangle with Marius, played by Eddie Redmayne.

“Basically, I was ready for two roles,” Swift told Redmayne during “The Graham Norton Show” (via Entertainment Weekly). “I had the looks of Cosette and the vocal range of Éponine, so it was clear I was there for a good time, but not for long. I wouldn’t get the role.”

Redmaynes Marius falls in love with Cosette while Éponine longs for him. Redmayne was already cast when Swift auditioned, as the “Midnights” singer said the Oscar-winner is one of her “favorite” actors.

“It’s not an experience I’ll have again in my life,” Swift recalled at the time. However, her experience was more like a fairy tale gone wrong.

“When I got there, they put me in a 19th-century street urchin costume and told me they were going to paint my teeth brown, and I was like, ‘You’re going to do that after I meet Eddie Redmayne, right?’ ‘ Swift said. “They made me look like death and it became a nightmare. When I met Eddie, I didn’t open my mouth to speak!”

Redmayne was similarly nervous upon meeting the Grammy winner, saying, “I thought we were just singing to each other – I didn’t know we were hugging. My overwhelming memory of it is of having pizza and garlic dumplings before and all I could think about was my garlic breath while Taylor died in my arms and I was trying to show emotion.

Director Hooper said in 2019 that while Swift “auditioned quite brilliantly for the role of Éponine,” he ultimately couldn’t cast the “Love Story” singer because there was disbelief that Swift “was a girl that people overlook would”. Similarly, Swift was also turned down for a role as an extra on Twilight: New Moon.

“It didn’t feel quite right to her for the most flattering of reasons,” Hooper told Vulture at the time. “I didn’t cast her, but I got very close to her.”

Newcomer Samantha Barks was cast in the role, which Swift auditioned for along with Funny Girl Broadway star Lea Michele, Evan Rachel Wood and Scarlett Johansson. Swift was later cast in Hooper’s 2019 musical film Cats.

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