“I created my own archive of how he said every word and every diphthong,” says Butler.
How do you sound likeElvis Presleywithout becoming a parody of the King?
In both his low-voiced drawl and Presley’s instantly recognizable singing voice, Butler delivers.
Austin Butler in ‘Elvis’.Hugh Stewart/Warner Bros.
Butler turned to interviews and performances to help him obsessively practice.
“I scoured all of them.
“That way, I couldn’t hear a difference between my voice and his.
I’d just keep honing it in until I could get as specific as possible.”
“So then I could break it up and go, ‘Okay, what am I filming today?
I’m in ‘62 how does he sound here?'”
“I think his voice changed a lot after he started hearing himself,” Butler muses.
The actor has been playing guitar and studying music since he was 13.
“It was just my own form of therapy.
“It is really like a muscle.
I was widening my range.
But it’s not just singing you’re having to find vocal mannerisms.
That could be a little tricky.”
Director Lurhmann describes a sequence in which Butler’s musical training shone through.
“We rehearsed for three months to a playback tape that we had.
But when I was shooting, Austin looked at me and was like, ‘This just is corny.
This has crapped out.
It’s fake.'”
“That’s the thing with Elvis,” Luhrmann says of the icon’s musicality.
“Elvis singing the lines, being the conductor, being the music.
That’s how he created.
