• iconNews
  • videos
  • entertainment
  • Home
  • News
    • UK News
    • US News
    • Australia
    • Ireland
    • World News
    • Weird News
    • Viral News
    • Sport
    • Technology
    • Science
    • True Crime
    • Travel
  • Entertainment
    • Celebrity
    • TV & Film
    • Netflix
    • Music
    • Gaming
    • TikTok
  • LAD Originals
    • Say Maaate to a Mate
    • Daily Ladness
    • Lad Files
    • UOKM8?
    • FreeToBe
    • Extinct
    • Citizen Reef
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • UNILAD
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
Snapchat
TikTok
YouTube

LAD Entertainment

YouTube

LAD Stories

Submit Your Content
Austin Butler 'Went Home In Tears' After Baz Luhrmann Asked For Him To Be Humiliated While Making Elvis

Home> Entertainment

Updated 20:55 27 Jul 2022 GMT+1Published 20:17 27 Jul 2022 GMT+1

Austin Butler 'Went Home In Tears' After Baz Luhrmann Asked For Him To Be Humiliated While Making Elvis

Butler stars as the king of rock and roll in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 movie

Emily Brown

Emily Brown

Elvis star Austin Butler has described going home in tears after director Baz Luhrmann encouraged people to mock him while he was preparing for the role.

Butler, who is 30 years old, has been widely praised for the performance he gave as the 'king of rock and roll' in Elvis, which was released last month after the actor was first cast in 2019.

In a bid to stay true to their inspiration, Luhrmann accompanied Butler about a month after casting him to the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, Tennessee, where Elvis recorded more than 200 songs.

Advert

Speaking in a new interview with VMAN, Butler described being 'so nervous' to be recording on the same equipment Elvis had used, adding: "We were recording old school, where all the musicians—and these are the best musicians in the world; our guitar player had actually played guitar with Scotty Moore, who was Elvis’s guitar player."

Butler was cast as Elvis before the coronavirus outbreak.
Warner Bros.

According to Butler, it seems simply using the same equipment as Elvis wasn't enough for Luhrmann; the director also wanted the actor to feel the things Elvis might have felt while singing.

He explained: "When I was on my first day in the recording studio, Baz wanted me to get as close to performing as possible.

"He had all the executives and everybody from RCA, who were back in the offices, he brought them into the recording studio and he goes, ‘I want you all to sit facing Austin’... and he told them to heckle me."

Advert

Butler remembered having the execs make fun of him while he was singing - no doubt a tough experience for any artist - but the situation made Butler appreciate what Elvis himself would have been going through when faced with tough crowds.

Butler said: "When we were filming this moment when Elvis first goes on stage and he’s getting heckled by the audience, I knew what that felt like. I went home in tears that night. I really did.”

Baz Lurhmann encouraged people to heckle Butler while he sang.
Sipa US/Alamy Stock Photo

Butler learned this kind of behaviour from Luhrmann was not unusual after he sought advice from Leonardo DiCaprio, who worked with the director on Romeo and Juliet and The Great Gatsby.

Recalling his conversation with the Titanic star to Entertainment Weekly, Butler said: “Leo told me, ‘Baz is going to constantly keep you off balance, and it’s going to pull things out of you [that] you never knew you had inside you'. That’s exactly the experience that I had.”

Advert

Butler's deep-dive into the world of Elvis became even more intense when the coronavirus outbreak prompted the film to shut down.

During the break, Butler 'wallpapered the entire apartment with images and a timeline of Elvis’s life', and consumed every bit of related material he could get his hands on.

Remembering the isolated time, he said: “I’m extremely grateful I had the film and the, for lack of a better word, obsession with Elvis to occupy my days. It gave me the feeling that there was a reason to get up every morning.”

Though Butler's work behind the scenes was undoubtedly gruelling, it paid off in his epic performance, which even earned praise even from Elvis' daughter.

Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros./Alamy

Topics: Austin Butler, Elvis, TV and Film, Celebrity

Emily Brown
Emily Brown

Emily Brown is the Community Desk Lead at LADbible Group. Emily first began delivering news when she was just 11 years old - with a paper route. She went on to graduate with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University before contributing to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems. She joined UNILAD in 2018 to cover breaking news, trending stories and longer form features, and now works as Community Desk Lead to commission and write human interest stories from across the globe.

Advert

Advert

Advert

Choose your content:

an hour ago
2 hours ago
  • an hour ago

    People are only just noticing the ‘questionable’ Don’t Stop Me Now Queen lyrics years later

    To be fair, it is a cracking song

    Entertainment
  • an hour ago

    Martin Scorsese stopped working with Warner Bros after they tried to make decision over film with huge IMDb score

    The two camps did not see eye-to-eye over the Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon classic

    Entertainment
  • 2 hours ago

    Dating coach says one text message from a partner could actually be a very worrying sign

    Another one to add to the list, guys

    Entertainment
  • 2 hours ago

    Noel Gallagher spent years moving brother Liam's furniture around to convince him there was a ghost

    The Oasis frontman appears to be rather concerned by the paranormal

    Entertainment
  • Austin Butler Spent Two 'Life Or Death' Years As Elvis For Movie Role
  • Old footage shown in Menendez Brothers Netflix doc is making viewers ‘sick’ and leaving them ‘in tears’
  • Chilling plea for help as man allows snake to eat him alive while recording the entire thing
  • Davina McCall breaks down in tears on Comic Relief as she opens up about her brain surgery