Eddie Redmayne’s Tony Awards Performance Will Haunt Everyone’s Nightmares: “My New Sleep Paralysis Demon”

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Cabaret (1972)

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Poor Eddie Redmayne! The Good Nurse actor is facing ruthless criticism on social media after he performed as Cabaret‘s Emcee in what some are calling a “criminal” rendition of “Wilkommen.”

Joined by the Cabaret company and his co-star Gayle Rankin, Redmayne put on a the bizarre performance complete with a theatrical French accent. The actor crawled around on stage as he performed the opening song of Cabaret, and while Redmayne’s performance was mercilessly taunted on social media, it drew much applause from the Tony Awards audience.

A viral post shared on X said, “Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret is my new sleep paralysis demon. jesus christ.”

“Imagine flipping the channels and seeing eddie redmayne the muppet crawling on the floor,” another viewer wrote, while someone else compared it to “edgy high school theater.”

Viewers at home appeared divided over Redmayne’s performance; while many were critical of his “strange” turn as The Emcee, others noted that this was simply the nature of his character.

“Doofuses dunking on Eddie Redmayne for acting like a little freak (not OP) are missing that 1) He’s performing the character that INVENTED the little freak,” one viewer wrote. “2) he’s exaggerating bc he’s acting for stage rather than camera COS IT’S THE TONYS.”

Redmayne was up for best performance by an actor in a musical for his work in Cabaret that evening, which he lost out on to Mindhunter star Jonathan Groff, who stars in Merrily We Roll Along.

Cabaret recently opened at the August Wilson Theater after a successful run in London’s West End. Though Redmayne caught some flack from viewers at home, his performance in the Broadway production has been hailed as “kinetic,” “physically precise” and “theatrically audacious.”

The actor has been focusing on the theater since starring in The Good Nurse and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore in 2022.

He is set to lead the British series The Day of the Jackal for Peacock and Sky. The series, based on the Frederick Forsyth novel, will follow the Jackal, an assassin hired to take out French President Charles de Gaulle in 1962.