Eddie Redmayne 'spent a lot of time ruminating' on 'problematic' roles

Eddie Redmayne has heard all those criticisms of his controversial performances. The Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them actor reflected on his divisive turns in some projects in an interview with Penn Badgely on his podcast Podcrushed.

In September, Redmayne finished his run on Broadway as the Emcee, a frequently queer-coded character in the revival of Cabaret, and in 2015 drama The Danish Girl, he played a trans woman, a role that gave him his second Oscar nomination.

Eddie Redmayne in 'The Danish Girl'.
Focus Features

"I have a history of parts that I've played, that have been problematic in some of those choices, and I've spent a lot of time ruminating on those things and wondering what I would do differently," Redmayne said. "When it came to Cabaret, I'd learned my lesson, and I didn't take the part on without knowing exactly what I was doing."

Redmayne said that he wasn't particularly surprised to hear that there was pushback among fans when he was cast as the Emcee in the 2021 West End revival of Cabaret, presumably because of prior criticism of his work in The Danish Girl.

"I think when I was cast, people assumed that I was gonna be doing — and because of the work that I'd done previously — that I was taking an iconically queer role, and whilst I absolutely understand that discussion, I also think that that character is descriptionless and deserves any form of interpretation," he explained. "I was upset by the backlash when it was announced, but I had faith in my own take on the role."

The Theory of Everything actor defended his portrayal of the character, which he later reprised in the Broadway production of the show. "The Emcee was a character that was created for the musical by Joel Grey and Hal Prince, and it was to weave the kind of narrative together," he said. "As far as what he exists as on the page, there is no character description for him. No one talks about him, he doesn't exist in the book [Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood]."

Eddie Redmayne in 'Cabaret'.
Marc Brenner

Redmayne argued that the Emcee isn't necessarily queer even though he has been interpreted as a queer character in the past. "He has been played iconically by queer actors absolutely brilliantly," he said. "And certainly, for example, in the Alan Cumming version, at the end of the piece, the Emcee, his costume is taken off, and he's revealed in a concentration camp outfit with a pink triangle...which was incredibly moving and was incredibly powerful on Broadway, and I think had sort of made people go, 'This is a gay character.' So I absolutely understood the questioning of that."

But Redmayne saw room for a more sinister interpretation of the character. "My take on it, rather than the Emcee being the victim, was the Emcee as perpetrator," the actor explained. "In my take on the Emcee, he starts in this world. He's based on some of those characters from, you know, German expressionist movies. He can lull people in, as those cabarets did, and skewer audiences — people who have paid a lot of money to be slapped in the face a bit. And gradually, over the evening, this kind of Puckish figure rises into the Aryan perpetrator."

Redmayne had previously expressed his regret over accepting a role in The Danish Girl. "No, I wouldn’t take it on now," he told The U.K. Times in 2021. "I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake."