Why Madonna Is the 'Villain' of Weird Al Yankovic Biopic

It seems that Evan Rachel Wood had fun playing Madonna in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, describing her own performance as the "mustache-twirling version" of the larger-than-life pop icon.

Wood's stellar acting chops are on full display in the forthcoming biopic, which also stars Daniel Radcliffe as the titular polka-loving accordion wiz. She recently opened up to Newsweek about her time emulating Madonna, the film's "villain."

"I mean, I've been a Madonna fan since I was very small. The Immaculate Collection was like one of the first…CDs that I had; my mom used to play it all the time," she said. "But there's, you know, Madonna is an artist that is constantly reinventing herself. And so you have to choose, you know: Which Madonna are you doing?"

Wood continued that the "Like a Virgin" songstress's early '80s era included "iconic" moments, and that the interviews Madonna gave at the time were "just absolutely brilliant."

"She knew exactly where she was going from day one," the actor said. "She disarmed everybody—like, no one knew how to interview this woman. She was just running circles around everybody. It was amazing to watch."

Madonna even raised eyebrows last year when she crawled around on Jimmy Fallon's desk during a taping of The Tonight Show.

The trailer for Weird shows Wood's Madonna and Radcliffe's Yankovic getting hot and heavy. But on Tuesday night, the real Yankovic cleared up rumors about the purported pairing during his own appearance on Fallon's show.

"Everybody's like, 'Did that really happen? Did Weird Al and Madonna have a thing?'" Yankovic told the host.

Although there are "a few little nuggets of truth sprinkled throughout" the film, the musician insisted that his relationship with Madonna is strictly "platonic."

"The only time I actually met her was in 1985. I talked to her for maybe like 45 seconds backstage," he said. "So that's the extent of the relationship."

Yankovic laughed with Fallon about how Madonna is "a huge part of the movie" regardless. He added that she "sort of becomes like the 'villain'" in the film, doing everything she can to get him to parody her single to help boost sales—a phenomenon in real life dubbed the "Yankovic bump."

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, a satire of biopics in general, is loosely based off of the parody musician's career.

Radcliffe also spoke with Newsweek last month about what it was like to emulate Yankovic in front of the man himself.

"I think honestly, his main note was not performance-related....It was accordion-related," Radcliffe said. "He basically was like, 'Can you pump it more?'"

The actor added: "You can make an accordion make a sound by doing like—you don't need to move it much. But Al is like, you know, a really good accordion player and so he's very expansive with it, and he was like: 'I would like you to look like I'm good at this, please.'"

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story will be available exclusively on The Roku Channel on Friday, November 4.