Netflix’s new Eurovision movie features Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as you’ve never seen them before, playing aspiring Icelandic singers hoping to make a mark at the Eurovision Song Contest.
The film features as many ridiculous bangers as you’d expect from a Eurovision story, with Ferrell and McAdams’ signature song, Volcano Man, being the power ballad to rule them all.
McAdams’ character Sigrit Ericksdóttir belts out some incredible notes in the film - but is it actually McAdams singing in the film?
The answer is yes... and no.
McAdams learned to play guitar and piano for the role, and her real voice is heard in one scene in which her character sings in front of a piano while composing Húsavík.
But for Sigrit’s enormous live vocals, the film recruited Swedish singer Molly Sandén, and the two singers’ voices were blended together by the film mixers.
Sandén - credited on the film’s soundtrack as My Marianne, her “Icelandic alter ego” - told Vanity Fair that she was recruited for the project by her friend Arnþór Birgisson, an Icelandic-Swedish songwriter who was composing the song Double Trouble for the film.
Sandén went on to provide vocals for McAdams’ character for the rest of the soundtrack, a surreal experience for the Swedish star, who has performed four times in the junior version of Eurovision.
“It felt like a rematch for 14-year-old Molly, to finally get somewhere in the Eurovision,” Sandén said.
“And it’s ironic because I lived in L.A. for almost two years, and my big dream was to be successful in the States...to have an opportunity like this. But when I gave up my dream and moved back to Sweden, that’s when I got this call and this opportunity.”
She joked that her journey contradicts the film’s message of tirelessly fighting for your goals. “For me it was kind of the opposite,” she said. “Just let go, and then you might get a phone call one early morning when you’re hungover.”
