Amanda Seyfried’s off Performance in ‘Les Misérables’ Once Left Eddie Redmayne Embarrassed

Actors Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne both had starring roles in the hit film Les Miserables. But Seyfried made a certain mistake while singing that might have created an awkward situation for her co-stars.

Eddie Redmayne called his ‘Les Misérables’ audition an ‘American Idol’ style nightmare

Les Misérables was a 2012 period piece and musical starring the likes of Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. It was one of several adaptations over the years of the 1862 French novel written by Victor Hugo. Redmayne and Seyfried would both find themselves cast in the acclaimed project as Marius Pontmercy and Cosette respectively.

Seyfried was ecstatic after being recruited for the feature. She was an avid fan of a past Les Misérables adaptation she grew up on, and always dreamed of being in the musical. So much so she might have unknowingly been preparing for the feature since she was a child.

“This is my all-time favorite musical, hand down. I fell in love with it when I was 11 and first saw it. I know every lyric, I know every song. I was Eponine from 11 to 15 in my head. When I was 15, I got into classical music and I was playing Cosette in recitals,” she once said in an interview with Access Hollywood.

Similarly, Redmayne had also been a fan of Les Misérables when he was younger. And although he’d earned his part in the film, the process of doing so was a unique experience for the actor.

“It was a horrible American Idol style nightmare that involved singing these songs that you’ve grown up loving, to the people who wrote them,” Redmayne explained to Collider in a 2013 interview.

There was a point where Redmayne’s performance garnered an awkward response that cast doubt in his casting.

“There was a horrible scary moment, at the end, when there was a silence in the room. But then, I got cast and started auditioning with Samantha [Barks] and Amanda, and various other actors and actresses,” he remembered.

Amanda Seyfried’s off Performance in ‘Les Misérables’ once left Eddie Redmayne embarrassed

While performing alongside Seyfried, Redmayne was initially confused by his co-star’s behavior. The Fantastic Beasts star found Seyfried singing off rhythm in a scene they were doing, and Redmayne wasn’t sure how to respond. Especially since he found it embarrassing to have to warn Seyfried about her performance.

“I was doing a romantic duet with Amanda and she was singing off-tune and slightly off-tempo, and I kept thinking, ‘This is an interesting take on the song,'” Redmayne once said in an interview with New York Daily News (via Contact Music). “We got to the end and she admitted she didn’t have her earpiece on. She was just singing along a cappella. I was too embarrassed to tell her.”

The actors in Les Misérables would typically wear earpieces to help them sing on rhythm and key. But Seyfried would occasionally forget to leave her earpiece in, which resulted in a performance that worried some of the film crew.

“I would leave it somewhere and I wouldn’t want anybody to know. I would just pretend I had it in. They all thought I was having some kind of stroke. It was kind of funny when we cut,” she said. “They would be like, ‘What’s wrong with you?'”

Amanda Seyfried regretted doing ‘Les Misérables’

Seyfried doesn’t look back at her starring role in Les Misérables too fondly. Although she was incredibly passionate for the role, in the end she wasn’t sure her singing was strong enough to do it justice. Which still bothered the Mean Girls alum many years later.

“I wish I could redo Les Misérables completely because the live singing aspect, I still have nightmares about it. Singing is more indulgent than acting in some ways,” she said on Variety’s Actors on Actors in 2021. I feel like when I have emotional scenes, where I get to really cry and feel what I’m actually feeling and be present in that, it feels really good and cathartic because crying is really cathartic. Singing is the same way. Just like, emoting through music and melody is so magical.”

Seyfried felt her singing as Cosette might have been weaker than she would’ve liked it to be. But as a more experienced actor, she would’ve liked to give the role another shot.

“I feel like I could definitely play Cosette now,” she said.