Austin Butler went through an extraordinary vocal transformation to become Elvis Presley. But who is behind all the singing in the biopic? Show
Listen to this articleLoading audio... Elvis is a new biopic from Baz Luhrmann focusing on the legendary rock ‘n’ roll superstar, Elvis Presley. It documents the life and career of the singer, from his childhood, all the way to stardom. The film recently became the third-highest grossing biopic since the 1970s, earning over £240 million at the worldwide box office to date. In the starring role as The King himself is 30-year-old American actor, Austin Butler, and co-starring in the film is Tom Hanks, who plays Elvis’ manager Colonel Tom Parker. Butler has appeared in major films including Quentin Tarantino’s, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), and his looks and even his natural, smooth southern speaking voice make him almost a dead-ringer for Elvis. However, with the star having beaten the likes of Harry Styles and Ansel Elgort for the role, he has put in time to develop the perfect singing voice for his portrayal. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Austin explained, “When I began the process, I set out to get my voice to be identical. That instills fear. So that got the fire burning. For a year before we started shooting, I was doing voice coaching.” Read more: Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic is officially coming to Netflix Is Austin Butler really singing and playing guitar in his role as rock 'n' roll legend, Elvis Presley? Picture: AlamyIs Austin Butler really singing in ‘Elvis’?The short answer is, yes, that really is Austin Butler’s voice you hear in Elvis – with snippets of the real singer blended in later on. The actor watched multiple videos of Elvis performing, studying footage of films and concerts to perfect the singer’s voice. Butler said he felt “such a responsibility to Elvis and to [ex-wife] Priscilla and [daughter] Lisa Marie, and all the people around the world who love him so much,” to get the portrayal right. In the film, Elvis’ early voice is sung exclusively by Butler. But as the singer ages, Butler’s voice is blended with tapes of midlife Elvis to give as similar a vocal tone as possible, a decision made by the film’s director, Baz Luhrmann. The Australian director is known for his reimaginings of William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet (1996), and Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2013). Read more: Pope Francis reveals he loves Bach’s Passions and Elvis Presley Is Austin Butler really playing guitar in ‘Elvis’?As well as being a strong singer, Butler has been playing the piano and guitar since he was 13. Similarly to Elvis, the actor taught himself to play his instruments. In an interview with Variety, he revealed he practised guitar so much as a child, that he resorted to supergluing his bleeding fingers back to together from over-playing. Butler had a chance to show off his musical scenes on screen when he guest starred on the NBC comedy Are You There, Chelsea? as a band lead singer who was the title character of the show’s love interest in episode three. (Watch above). Although he’s played on a major television network, and had 17 years of practice behind him, the singer still expressed nerves when he had to record his music for Elvis. Butler revealed in his Variety interview that he struggled at first getting up on a stage to film in front of around 600 extras, in a bedazzled jumpsuit, trying to embody the king of rock ‘n’ roll. “I learned that Elvis was very shy as a kid,” Butler explained, “and he would ask people to turn around when he played the guitar and turn off the lights in the room. “And I thought, that’s how I feel now. But he overcame that,” and so did Butler. Read more: 17 pop songs you didn’t know were directly inspired by classical music Austin at the piano, as ‘Elvis’ in new Baz Luhrmann movie. Picture: AlamyElvis Presley was a long-time classical music fan, and his former wife, Priscilla Presley, told Rolling Stone in 2016 that “Elvis always loved the great, operatic vocalists. “We often talked about his interest in recording material that allowed him to perform in that space.” The rock ‘n’ roll singer often borrowed tunes from classical music, as seen in one of his biggest hits, ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’, which shares a little bit of its main melody with 18th-century composer Jean-Paul-Égide Martini’s Piacer d'amor. None other than Leonardo DiCaprio warned Austin about working with Baz after he landed the role of Elvis Presley. By by Stephanie Soteriou BuzzFeed News Reporter Posted on July 27, 2022, 12:44 pm
Last month, the much-anticipated Elvis Presley biopic, Elvis, was finally released after being dramatically delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Warner Bros Austin Butler has won high praise for his performance in the titular role.Warner Bros Following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Elvis received a 12-minute standing ovation, and there was immediate Oscar buzz surrounding its lead.Samir Hussein / WireImage In fact, Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, said that she would “eat [her] own foot” if Austin doesn’t receive an Academy Award for his portrayal of her famous father, which she said was “FINALLY done accurately and respectfully.”Twitter: @LisaPresley But the performance of a lifetime didn’t come completely naturally to Austin, and he has been open about how much of himself he gave away while preparing for the role.Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue In fact, after movie production shut down in director Baz Lurhmann’s home country of Australia in March 2020, Austin refused the invitation to be flown back to Los Angeles and instead spent the next six months fully immersing himself in all things Elvis.Tommaso Boddi / Getty Images Living alone in a foreign country during the COVID-19 lockdown, Austin told British GQ that he turned his apartment into what was effectively a “detective scene” as he dug as deeply as possible into the real-life person that he was portraying.Rb / Redferns Austin said that letting himself “marinate” paved the way for a “very different” movie as he admitted that he was “grateful” for the extra time that the lockdown afforded him.Warner Bros And Austin ended up being so dedicated to doing the role justice that he ultimately ended up losing touch with his own identity by the time filming wrapped, he said.Jeremy Chan / Getty Images The day after the project ended in March 2021, Austin was rushed to hospital as his body began “shutting down.”Axelle / FilmMagic “You can lose touch with who you actually are. And I definitely had that when I finished Elvis — not knowing who I was,” he said to GQ. “The next day I woke up at four in the morning with excruciating pain, and I was rushed to hospital.”Warner Bros “My body just started shutting down the day after I finished Elvis,” Austin said.Warner Bros The star was bedridden for a week after he was diagnosed with a virus that simulates appendicitis. Despite this, Austin flew to London the moment that he recovered so that he could begin work on his next project, Masters of Air.Tim P. Whitby / Tim P. Whitby / Getty Images for Warner Bros. And in a new interview, Austin has opened up some more about how grueling the Elvis experience was for him as he recalled going home “in tears” after Baz and a bunch of execs heckled and humiliated him on his first day in the recording studio.Jon Kopaloff / Getty Images Austin believes that they did this so that he would know how Elvis felt when he was heckled by the audience the first time that he went onstage, but that didn’t stop it from having a deep impact on him.Warner Bros “When I was on my first day in the recording studio, Baz wanted me to get as close to performing as possible,” Austin told VMAN for its fall/winter 2022 issue. “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.”Karwai Tang / WireImage “So then they were making fun of me and stuff while I was singing,” he added.Warner Bros Defending what happened, Austin went on: “When we were filming this moment when Elvis first got 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.”Warner Bros And Baz’s reputation of acting a little out of left field when directing movies preceded him — Austin also revealed that none other than Leonardo DiCaprio had warned him about the filmmaker’s approach after he landed the role.Michael Ostuni / Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Leonardo famously worked with Baz when he starred as Romeo in his 1996 adaptation of Romeo + Juliet, and again in 2013 for The Great Gatsby.Stephane Cardinale - Corbis / Corbis via Getty Images “I had spoken to Leo before and he said: ‘Baz is gonna push you in ways you didn’t know somebody could,’” Austin said. “‘He’s gonna push you off balance and keep you off balance.’”Jeremy Chan / Getty Images But thankfully, Austin was able to overcome the intense working conditions, and Baz has been nothing but full of praise for him ever since.Christophe Simon / AFP via Getty Images Speaking on the Fitzy and Wippa podcast, Baz said that Austin was “almost born to play” the role. “He just happened, like, two years nonstop living and breathing as Elvis," Baz said. "He’s now going through a…deprogramming thing because he’s been a long time since he’s known who he was."Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images In fact, Baz previously admitted that Austin was so devoted to embodying Elvis that he was sometimes unable to differentiate between when his lead actor was in character and when he was being himself.Warner Bros “I asked one of my assistants [about Butler’s accent], and the guy said, ‘Well, he’s not Southern. He’s from Anaheim [California],’” Baz told GQ. “I don’t think, until recently, I actually came to understand how Austin actually sounded.”Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty Images The iconic Elvis voice has famously lingered, and Austin has been forced to defend the fact that he still occasionally speaks with a Southern drawl in interviews.Warner Bros “It’s funny because certain situations trigger it, I think," he told Yahoo! Lifestyle of his accent. "You know, for one, being surrounded by his name everywhere and then two, it becomes, I think, as well something where, I mean, that was the voice that I spoke in for two years."Warner Bros "It is so habitual at the end, you get done and you kind of don’t remember what your natural voice is,” he added.Edward Berthelot / Getty Images In a separate interview with Elle Australia, Austin said: "You spend so much time obsessing about one thing, and it really is like muscular habits, your mouth can change. It's pretty amazing."Theo Wargo / Getty Images And I think it’s fair to say that a slight change in accent is a small price to pay for a performance this impressive.Tap to play GIFTap to play GIF giphy.com
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What did Austin Butler do to play Elvis?
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