Weird Al Yankovic talks not being seen as a ‘sex maniac,’ Gabrielle Union dazzles and more from the TIFF opening night

The 47th annual Toronto International Film Festival opened Thursday night to fan-packed Toronto streets, star-studded red carpets and a Weird Al Yankovic look-alike dance group. The festival made it known Toronto was an epicenter for all things Hollywood.

Opening night featured the premiere of real-life adaptations “The Inspection” and “The Swimmers,” including the highly anticipated Weird Al Yankovic biopic, “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.”

“The Swimmers”

“The Swimmers” is a long-awaited film about two sisters, Yusra and Sara Mardini, who when the engine on their refugee boat, fleeing war-torn Syria, died about three and a half hours from the shores of Greece, jumped out and swam the boat to shore. The sisters saved the refugees onboard and Yusra would go on to compete in the refugee team at the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “The Swimmers,” directed by Sally El Hosaini, brings this moving story to the big screen.

At TIFF, the sisters were in attendance with Yusra’s swim coach, Sven Spannekrebs, Hosaini, the actors and real-life sisters who play the Mardinis (Manal Issa who plays Sara and Nathalie Issa who plays Yusra), Matthias Schweighöfer (who plays Spannekrebs) and more.

“The first time I heard about this was the beginning of 2016 … I got this call from (producer) Ali Jafaar and I said, ‘Let’s do the Olympics first and we’ll see,’” Spannekrebs laughed. At TIFF he wore a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees blue pin, in support of all refugees around the world. He was stunned by Jafaar’s pitch, he shared, but maintained his focus was on the Mardinis’ well-being and resettling them in Berlin to start a new life.

The film comes at a time of heightened refugee crises worldwide from Ukraine to Pakistan to still in Syria. Yusra has previously penned an op-ed explaining how becoming a refugee gave her a new title and identity. She believes the film will bring awareness to not only her story, but that of the many refugees around us.

“It’s going to make people understand that refugees are normal people, that we have normal dreams too and (we are people) who did not choose to be in this situation,” Yusra said.

The Issa sisters moved through the carpet side-by-side, their love for one another deepened through the creation of the film.

“When Nathalie was doing the swimming scenes and the Olympic scenes, and the scenes that were hard, and I was watching, I was shaking,” Manal said, while her hands shook. “I was thinking this is my sister, if something happens to her, I don’t know what’s gonna happen to me. And it was the first time I think this in my life for anyone … when you realize you love someone so much.”

“It reminds me of the scene where we arrived on the shore and I think I see the love of my sister because she was so scared for me because I was going through a hard scene and I saw her love through her eyes,” Nathalie said.

They also described the mental and physical challenges of the film.

“It was really emotional, our characters are going through (many) obstacles. It was physical too because they had to walk a lot and swim a lot, and so when you are representing (something) mentally exhausting, you also become physically exhausted … Playing a character that goes through a hard thing is contagious,” Nathalie said. “We are really lucky to have had each other.

“The Swimmers” will be distributed by Netflix.

“The Inspection”

”The Inspection” marks writer-director Elegance Bratton’s debut and is inspired by his own life experiences. The film follows a young Black man who has been kicked out of his mother’s house for being gay and joins the Marine Corps. In one scene, our lead character says through tears, “If I die in this uniform, I’m a hero to somebody.” The film navigates the journey of growth, self-discovery and the politics of the Corps.

The cast features Ellis French (who portrays Bratton’s life, playing Jeremy Pope), Gabrielle Union who plays Inez French (Jeremy’s mother) and more.

“Elegance reached out to me and said I got this role for you,” Union said. “He said, I do believe if you can figure out a way (into the mind of Inez French), that it can be so powerful for other parents to figure a way in where they didn’t exactly see a way to love their children.”

Zaya Wade, the daughter of Dwyane Wade and stepdaughter of Union, came out as transgender in 2020 to brutal transphobia. Union shared the difficulties of navigating that and how her experience with this enabled her to reach deep into her role.

“It’s dark, it’s dark,” Union began before taking a pause. “When you’re a mother to a child that, people you have grown up with, people you consider friends, question and debate your child’s very existence and humanity, where you’re looking at death threats, for a child? And I know we’re not the only family experiencing this … This is my important role and my most important film to date to get it right because literal lives are hanging in the balance and none of our kids are disposable.”

Effie Brown, producer and financier of the film, who runs Gamechanger Films, explained the need for more stories like this.

“I believe it’s important to amplify our voices … It was also really important to us that not only are we amplifying at the front of the screen, people of colour, LGBT+ communities, but we’re also representing it behind the screen,” Brown said. “It’s really good to be able to show that people of colour, we’ve always been here, and we’ve always been very patriotic.”

”Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”

If there’s one thing viewers are asked to keep in mind it’s that Weird Al, is not as weird as he’s portrayed in his biopic. “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” midnight premiere at TIFF was jam-packed with media and fans alike — there was barely any elbow room as fans chanted “Weird Al” throughout the evening. The premiere featured dancers dressed as Yankovic, featuring curly wigs and Hawaiian shirts, but the crowd went wild when the cast arrived in their black cars.

The biopic started in 2010, when writer-director Eric Appel shared a trailer promising to reveal the “true” Yankovic. More than a decade later, the truth might be skewed but the film is here. Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Yankovic, was present and more excited than ever. Also present was Evan Rachel Wood, who plays Madonna, Appel and of course, Yankovic himself. He smiled when asked what legacy he hoped to leave behind.

“The real answer to that is probably not the me that’s depicted in the biopic,” Yankovic chuckles. When questioned more on the film, Yankovic seemingly hinted at wanting a bit more truth in the film than comedy and glamourization. “The biopic, if I’m being real, is a biopic in quotes. There’s some nuggets of truth in there but it’s quite a bit of exaggeration and complete fabrication, so I mean, my real story is out there for anyone that cares to learn about it and I’m hoping that people don’t think that I’m a hard-drinking, sex maniac.”

“With this movie, we tried to create and craft our own unique version of what Weird Al’s life was,” Appel said. “So, I think I gave the cast the liberty to sort of, help create this version of Weird Al and Madonna in Evan’s case, and it was really a collaborative process between all of us.”

When Radcliffe was asked his biggest challenge in depicting Yankovic, it came down to one musical instrument.

“Honestly, I spent a lot of time tryna’ learn accordion — I’m not very good — but it seemed like a kind of best effort to be made to try and at least learn that,” Radcliffe began. “Other than that, this shoot was so fast and there’s stunts and choreography and song, and so my prep was knowing everything.”

Asked why now for a Weird Al Yankovic biopic, Appel knew his answer.

“A legend like Weird Al deserves his own,” Appel said.

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