Hey.
How are ya?
Very good to see you.
Great to see you.
You were bald last time you were here.
Last time, I was bald.
Now I'm not. - Yeah.
No, yeah, that was just after we'd
finished filming "Rocketman."
And for the role, we sort of dyed my hair orange, thinned
it out, shaved my hairline up.
But it grew back.
It did grow back.
Were you ever worried that it might not grow back?
Every single day.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think about that sometimes-- if I shave my head,
maybe it wouldn't come back, and that would be it.
Yeah.
Yeah, the anxiety was massive.
Well, I thought you were just terrific in the movie.
And it's a lot of fun.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
I was wondering if--
after President Trump called Kim Jong-un rocket man--
Yeah?
Did anybody say, hey, maybe we need
to rethink the title of this?
Was anyone worried?
No.
But it crossed my mind. - It did?
Yeah.
I thought-- yeah.
The only other thing I thought it could have been
was "I'm Still Standing." That would have been quite cute.
Yeah.
Or "Tiny Dancer," or something like that?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Any of the above.
Yeah.
So you were running over alternate titles,
but nobody else was?
Yeah.
Did you know there was another movie called "Rocketman?"
I discovered this today.
I was looking something up, and yes,
this is a real movie from 1997, starring Harlan Williams.
That's-- what's hilarious is that's exactly
how I look in "Rocketman."
In this one-- I'm not sure.
I did not see this film, but it would
seem that he died in space.
So--
Yeah.
Not quite the fun of the movie that you
made, but there you go.
How about that?
You saw the premiere with Elton John?
I did. Yeah.
What was that like?
We had this incredible experience.
We premiered the movie at Cannes, and--
I'd never been to Cannes.
And from what I'm led to believe--
None of us have. Yes.
Well, good.
Then we've got something in common already.
This is going to go very well.
But apparently, I'd been led to believe that they can be
a little-- a little cold if they're not--
if they don't approve.
And I've even heard rumors that they can boo.
Yeah, they do boo.
They boo sometimes.
Yeah.
So I was, understandably, quite nervous going in.
And I'd found out that I wasn't sat next to Elton--
which, initially, I was furious about.
Oh, yeah. Sure.
And then the lovely people from the marketing department
at Paramount said, well, he's going to sit between his friend
of 50 years and his husband. And I was like, all right.
All right. OK.
I can take that.
But-- - You're him.
You're even closer to him than them.
Right.
So I'm sat here, Bernie Taupin, Elton
John, David Furnish, and Dexter Fletcher, the director, here.
And we sort of watch the whole movie at this kind of angle,
you know?
To try and-- to try and ascertain
if he approved or not.
Had he not seen anything before?
So he'd seen-- so he'd seen bits,
rushes, dailies, and the trailer,
I think, several million times.
But not the whole movie?
But not the whole movie.
It was the first time I'd seen it
seen it with all the finished--
all the finished VFX, and everything.
And to see them--
you know, watch the scene in which
they meet in 1968, or whatever, and be grabbing
each other on the knee-- - Bernie Taupin?
Smiling. Yeah, Bernie and Elton.
And then at the end of the movie,
Elton, about 15 minutes before the end,
just absolutely broke down, and he was blubbering.
And then-- and then this amazing thing happened.
So the lights come up, and I'm very
moved, because Elton is moved.
But Elton, because he's an old pro,
has managed to get himself looking immaculate again.
Whereas I am just melting, you know, with all these cameras
on me.
But it was amazing.
And we-- you know, I was visualizing scenarios
in which we'd get booed, and we received
a four minute standing ovation. - Yeah, that's pretty good.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's--
[APPLAUSE]
And the reviews have been great, too.
Do you look at that sort of thing?
So I try and avoid reviews, but Elton
sends me them every day.
- He does? - Every day.
I mean, he's sort of vetting my reviews.
I'm sure there are bad ones that he's not sending.
But yeah, it's been--
He emails them to you?
He emails them, yeah.
It's the same title every time.
And another one.
I would love to know what Elton John's email address is.
I wonder if there's--
is there a word from one of his songs in--
Well, it's-- no.
No.
Is it anything fun?
Uh-- No. It's quite pedestrian, actually.
- Oh, it is? - Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. - OK.
I feel like I'm treading in dangerous territory.
No, you have to be careful.
People wind up getting into his bank account,
and then you're in a lot of trouble.
Yeah.
So the movie is-- well, it's a musical, a lot of it.
It is.
And it's an autobiography, or a biography, of Elton.
And of course, because it is, there's a lot of sex,
and there's a lot of drugs, and all these things.
Yep. There's a bit of that.
Yeah, there's a bit of that.
Is that-- is that cool with, like, your family?
Is there anyone in your family that's--
No.
So yeah, actually, my uncle, who--
It's always an uncle.
It's always-- isn't it always an uncle,
at weddings and things?
Yeah.
So he's an older Welsh gentleman, quite traditional.
In no way prejudiced, but quite traditional, you know?
Can I swear?
Yes, absolutely.
We'd love it if you would.
So he went to the cinema to see it in sleepy [INAUDIBLE],,
my hometown, the other day.
It was very silent during mine and Richard Madden's love
scene--
apart from my uncle, who went, oh, [BLEEP] hell!
Really loudly.
Which I rather enjoyed.
[LAUGHTER]
Your other relatives reported this to you?
Yeah, they did.
My aunt did, yeah.
She texted me immediately.
One question the movie does not answer
is what the hell does "Benny and the Jets" mean?
Do you have any idea?
I have absolutely no idea.
And I've never asked for any topic.
I quite like the sort of prosaic, nebulous quality
of things.
We take the songs in our movie and use them to tell the story.
So "Benny and the Jets" in our film is all about--
it's a real low ebb.
It's all about excess, and darkness, and sort
of anger and frustration.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
(SINGING) And I think it's gonna be a long,
long till touchdown brings me round
again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'm a rocketman.
Rocketman.
Burning out his fuse up here alone.
And I think it's gonna be a long, long time.
That is Taron Egerton in "Rocketman."
Boy, I remember that so well.
When Elton sang at Dodger Stadium,
it was such a big deal.
- An iconic thing, right? - Yeah.
It was like-- I don't know that anyone had
done anything like that before. And--
No.
But nice hit, by the way.
OK, yeah.
So me hitting the baseball, the first time--
you know, I said to Dexter, the director, before we started--
I was like, look, let's just do it--
let's just do it with CG, because I'm
going to make a fool of myself.
I hit that thing every time.
Really?
No word of a lie.
Every time.
Have you ever played baseball before?
Never played baseball before.
And I tried to do it again afterwards,
and I missed it every time.
I don't know.
I must have just been channeling the big man,
because it went very well. - Yeah.
It's funny because you're thinking,
oh, the singing is what I really have to nail,
and then suddenly you have--
Someone gives you a baseball bat.
Yeah.
How about the singing?
You did all your own singing.
- I did, yeah. - You did a great job with that.
Thank you.
And-- But also, what is the hardest Elton John
song to sing, of all the hits?
I dunno.
I mean, Elton said, you know, at the start of the process--
he said, you're a ballad singer.
You can hold a tune.
The rock stuff will be what tests you.
So "Benny and the Jets," "Saturday Night's
All Right For Fighting."
Those things that need that kind of gravel.
And I remember to begin with, I was dreadful at it.
And then one of the last things we recorded,
about sort of four or five months into the process,
was "Pinball Wizard."
and I emailed him a rough mix--
after a few drinks--
just to see what he thought.
And he said-- he just wrote back, you've got it now.
And so that was very--
When you say you were dreadful,
did others agree that you were dreadful,
or was everyone telling you you were good?
No, but you know when everyone's being nice,
and you can just tell. - Yeah.
You can tell when they were being nice.
You can just tell when they're being nice.
Elton included?
Was he being supportive, and--
Elton's very supportive.
He's not always nice, but he's very supportive.
Yeah.
He's the best.
Do you-- have you become, like--
you think you will have a lifelong
friendship with Elton John now?
It sounds so weird to say, doesn't it?
You know, like, I love him.
And he-- You know, he wrote me a very beautiful note on the day
of the Cannes premiere, and he said,
we're cut from the same cloth.
And I hope I'm here for many years
to come, to be your touchstone.
Yeah, well, that's very--
yeah, that's very sweet.
Have you been to his house? - I have.
You have? Yeah?
- Yeah. - What's his house like?
Yes, it's big.
Yeah.
It's very--
More than three bedrooms?
I think so, yeah.
That's how I imagined it, yeah.
The guest room-- the guest room
that I stayed in is known as--
it's, like, the cat room.
And it's just full of ornamental cats.
Oh, ornamental? OK.
All right.
Which for some people is really nice.
I like cats.
But for some people, it wouldn't be what you wanted, would it?
But it's very lovely. - Is there--
It smells fantastic, the furnished--
It doesn't smell like cats?
It does not smell like cats.
And I think that's the beauty of the ornamental ones,
as opposed to the real ones.
Yes.
Is there a huge piano in the middle of the place?
So there's a huge piano, but you
can't play it, because it's covered
in things like ornamental cats.
What?
Well, he doesn't play piano at home.
I think he spends so much time on the road
that when he's at home, he wants to be dad, you know?
And do the family man thing.
Interesting.
So no, there's not much piano playing going on.
Do you think you're in his will now?
Do you think he's, like, taken that much of a shine to you,
that he's-- he's put you in there?
Maybe give you a few aren't ornamental cats,
or something like that?
I might get a doormat, or something.
I don't know.
I would hope so. Well, great job in the movie.
- Thank you. - So much fun to watch.
It's called "Rocketman."
It opens in theaters on Friday.
Taron Egerton, everybody.