Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of Elvis Presley had a little help from Häagen-Dazs. The actor has revealed that, in order to gain weight to more closely resemble Elvis in the last stretch of his career and life, he added melted ice cream to his diet.
Weight transformations are always admired in Hollywood, from both extremes. Luckily for Butler, when it actually came to shooting the film, he had a bodily adjustment suit and prosthetics to help out. “We don’t call them fat suits,” he quipped in conversation with Variety.
The ice cream, and “a dozen of doughnuts a day” came before all that, he revealed. He was advised by his agent to put on the weight in order to convince Elvis director Baz Luhrmann that he could play a convincing older Presley. Butler then took a page from Ryan Gosling’s book from when he was gearing up to play a perverted child predator in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, and started drinking melted ice cream.
Butler and Gosling’s stories had completely opposite endings, though, because the former successfully convinced Luhrmann to go with him for the role of Elvis, while the latter shocked Jackson into firing him from the part after gaining 60 pounds.
Production on Elvis was massively affected by the pandemic, which eventually led Butler to rent a place in Australia while he waited for the ball to get rolling. When shooting finally kicked off, none of it was done chronologically, so the Carrie Diaries actor couldn’t have put on the weight even if he wanted to.
Still, the Golden Globe-winning actor probably didn’t want to keep the weight for more than a few weeks. He described the experience as “fun for a week or so, and then you feel awful about yourself.”
Elvis is nominated for eight Oscars. It’s available to stream now on HBO Max.