“Weird Al” Yankovic Scores His First Emmy Nomination

James Hibberd
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“Weird Al” Yankovic may have “Lost on Jeopardy,” but hopefully he’ll win at the 75th Emmy Awards.

The parody singer-songwriter just picked up his first-ever Emmy nomination — two in fact — for his biographical Roku movie, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.

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The 63-year-old was honored for outstanding writing for an original movie and for original music and lyrics for “Now You Know.”

In addition, Daniel Radcliffe (who played Yankovic) was nominated for outstanding lead actor in a limited series or movie, and the film was nominated for outstanding television movie, outstanding writing for a limited series or movie, and in several other technical categories.

Yankovic reacted to the news on Twitter: “Sorry for screaming at the top of my lungs, but WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY JUST GOT EIGHT EMMY NOMINATIONS!!!!”

The honors are a major victory for an underdog project that Yankovic told The Hollywood Reporter was rejected all over Hollywood.

“We pitched it everywhere and they’re like, ‘Yeah, no,'” he said. “Then we thought, ‘We needed to explain what the movie is,’ so we came up with a whole outline. We went everywhere again and we pitched: ‘OK, here’s the whole movie, what do you think?’ And they’re like, ‘That’s really funny. Not interested.’ Then we [figured], ‘We’ve got the movie, so let’s just write the script.’ So we wrote the script and then we attached Daniel Radcliffe, and we thought, ‘OK, there’s going to be a bidding war. Everybody’s going to want this now!’ There wasn’t a bidding war, but Roku did, in fact, decide that they wanted to make the movie.”

The Roku project is described as “the unexaggerated true story about the greatest musician of our time. From a conventional upbringing where playing the accordion was a sin, Al rebelled and made his dream of changing the words to world-renowned songs come true. An instant success and sex symbol, Al lives an excessive lifestyle and pursues an infamous romance that nearly destroys him. With Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson, and an A-list cast of thousands their agents won’t let us reveal.”

The 75th Primetime Emmy Awards are scheduled for Monday, Sept. 18 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT live on Fox.

Read: The full list of major Emmy nominations.

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