Doing "alpha-nerd stuff" in front of Rihanna may have landed Daniel Radcliffe the lead in Weird

Want to catch Weird Al Yankovic’s attention in such a profound way he keeps your name in the back of his mind for years until the time comes to cast his biopic, Weird? Just do some nerdy shit on live TV in front of Rihanna. As Yankovic tells The A.V. Club’s Ian Spelling in a new interview, that’s what closed the deal for Daniel Radcliffe.

Yankovic says that Radcliffe first caught his eye in 2010, when the Harry Potter star appeared on The Graham Norton Show alongside Rihanna, and took the opportunity to perform “The Elements” by Tom Lehrer. In Yankovic’s book, that qualifies as “an extremely nerdy thing to do.”

“The fact that he memorized that and then performed it on national TV in front of Rihanna? That’s alpha-nerd stuff,” Yankovic muses. I thought at that moment, “Oh, we’re kindred spirits. This guy … we’ll be friends.”

After that, Yankovic said Radcliffe stayed in a corner of his mind “for years”— when he saw Radcliffe’s name on a shortlist of actors in consideration for the lead role in Weird, Yankovic knew exactly how to proceed.

“I thought, ‘Daniel’s got to be the guy,’” Yankovic recalls. “He’s got the right spirit. He got the right energy. He definitely has the acting chops. I can’t imagine anybody that would be more suited to this role than him.”

So what exactly is that right energy? According to Yankovic, it’s a healthy balance between comedic and dramatic timing, and the ability to convey a “very specific tone.”

“It’s obviously a comedy, but we’re not playing it like a comedy,” Yankovic explains. “We’re playing it like an extremely serious Oscar-baiting Hollywood biopic, so the comedic and dramatic moments had to land. There are some moments where some people weep, in the screenings. It hits both ends of the spectrum. We needed somebody like Daniel, who’d be able to play both sides.”

Weird is currently available for streaming on The Roku Channel.