Eddie Redmayne says Harvey Weinstein didn’t want him in My Dinner With Marilyn

Disgraced Hollywood mogul and accused serial rapist Harvey Weinstein had a bad reputation long before the #MeToo movement knocked him from his throne. For decades, rumors of career sabotage, violence, and all-around bad behavior surrounded Weinstein, and today, Eddie Redmayne adds yet another story to the book.

In his recent Vanity Fair “Career Timeline,” the Oscar-winning actor revealed that Weinstein approached him on the set of My Week With Marilyn and told Redmayne that he didn’t want him in the movie because of his face. “I got cast in [My Week With Marilyn] by the lovely Simon Curtis,” Redmayne said. “On our first day of filming, I remember he told me, on day one to walk with him. [Weinstein] said, ‘Walk with me,’ and I was terrified.”

“He sort of told that basically he didn’t want me in the movie, and that I was moving my face too much. So my sort of overwhelming memory of that film is just trying not to move my face, which explains quite a lot of the performance.”

Redmayne’s recollection isn’t very severe in the grand scheme of Weinstein’s crimes, but it is a weird thing to say to an actor on their first day in front of the camera. For his part, Weinstein is on trial for numerous sexual assault and harassment allegations. Recently, and ironically, the guy who hates when an actor moves their face too much was told to stop staring blankly at the jury.

As for Redmayne, while the interview does not go into his legendary role in Jupiter Ascending, he was very generous about his performance in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. “When we started on the first Fantastic Beasts, there were things that were very stressful,” he said. “Like having a wand is your childhood dream, but suddenly you’re presented with this thing, and you get complete stage fright. I don’t have a clue what to do with it. And so wand school was created.”

“The joy of those films was getting to watch new actors come in and be presented with their wand and watching the inner kid just reveal itself from everyone and anyone, however extraordinary the actor.”