Rocketman (W9): what did Elton John think of his biopic?

Want to sing and dance in front of your television? Don’t miss Rocketman, broadcast this Monday, May 1, 2023 at 9:05 p.m. on W9. More exuberant than the sad and very conventional Bohemian Rhapsody, released a few months earlier in cinemas, this film retraces the extraordinary career of one of the world’s greatest singing stars: Sir Elton John. Just as exuberant as the singer, Rocketman, which one of the producers is none other than David Furnish, the husband of Elton John, is a whirlwind story that owes a lot to the interpretation of Taron Egerton. In addition to his astonishing resemblance to the interpreter of Candle in the windthe actor of Kingsman 1 and 2 sings and plays the piano with mastery.

Taron Egerton dubbed by Elton John

Before embodying the singer with more than 300 million albums sold, Taron Egerton visited him at his home in 2018. “Our meeting made sparks“, he had also confided to Tele-Leisure. For his part, Elton John quickly dubbed the young actor. “I knew Taron was the right man when I heard him sing Don’t let the sun go down on me. I thought it was really important that whoever was playing me didn’t lip sync, I wanted him to actually sing the songs, and Taron had already sung brilliantly I’m still standing in the animated movie All on stage”, writes the singer in a very long letter published on the site of The Guardian, in May 2019.

Elton John overwhelmed with emotion

In this same letter, Elton John says frankly what he thought of Rocketman. And while his half-brother was shocked by one aspect of the film, he is, on the contrary, dithyrambic. “I had been at the cinema for about fifteen minutes when I started crying. To really sob, in that loud, unrestrained way that makes people turn around and look at you with alarmed expressions.“, he says. He who had kept a discreet distance with the process of creating the film confesses to having been overwhelmed by emotion. “I was unprepared for the power of what I saw“, he explains. Elton John is particularly full of praise for Taron Egerton, but also for Jamie Bell, who plays his lifelong accomplice, composer Bernie Taupin.”Jamie and Taron even managed to immortalize my relationship with Bernie, which is frankly a miracle, because I really have no idea how it works“, he wrote. The singer believes that Rocketman is a film that resembles his life “chaotic, funny, crazy, horrible, bright and dark“And isn’t that, after all, the best compliment you can pay to a biopic?