‘My new sleep paralysis demon’: Eddie Redmayne’s Tony Awards performance is an instant meme

Eddie Redmayne has never been afraid to get as weird as possible. The Oscar, Tony and BAFTA-winning actor commits to every single role, be it Stephen Hawking, Newt Scamander, Danish Girl, or whatever the everloving heck was happening in Jupiter Ascending. Naturally, Redmayne extended that commitment to strangeness to his performance as the Emcee in Broadway’s Cabaret.

Clearly, the effort did not go unappreciated by the theater community, as Redmayne was nominated for a Tony for the role. Naturally, Ed was asked to perform a rendition of the title tune for the Tony audience, both in the theater and at home, meaning a whole lot more of us got a glimpse of what he’s been up to. 

And my oh my was it ever glorious. 

There’s a whole lot going on here. Most of it fascinating, some of it slightly disturbing, all of it very German.

As predicted, Redmayne puts his entire being into the performance, for better or worse. And the internet had some thoughts. 

From a performance that, let’s say, divided audiences, the memes came hard and fast. 

So stay weird as weird can be, Redmayne. We, as an audience, are all the richer for it!

The internet is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here to get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.