It was all over the internet last night...

Twitch first reported that Taylor Swift and Amanda Seyfried have been offered the parts of Eponine and Cosette respectively in Tom Hooper’s upcoming Les Miserables, scheduled to start shooting in March. Seyfried I can live with, and even welcome, as Cosette. As for Eponine...

I wrote about the Eponine shortlist here in November. At the time, according to the NY Post, it was down to Lea Michele, Taylor Swift, Evan Rachel Wood, and Scarlett Johansson. And what I said was...

Anyone but Taylor Swift.

As I have noted repeatedly over the last few months, I have a very serious attachment to Les Miserables, so strong that I don’t even like it when people refer to Les Miserables as Les Mis.

GROSS.

Please do not ever write to me and call it Les Mis. Les Miserables is not Les Mis. You know what is Les Mis? Les Mis is a movie with Taylor Swift playing Eponine,THAT is Les Mis. Les Mis is Phantom of the Opera starring Emmy f-cking Rossum. (Thanks Lorella) Les Mis is what every hand-hearting 14 year old with batting eyelashes and experimental eye-shadow will be calling it. So, you know, by all means, if you want to be one of those people, keep on with your referring to it as Les Mis.

Otherwise it’s Les Miserables. And it is most certainly not Taylor Swift. Which is proof, yet again, that studio executives are f-cking morons. The reason why Les Miserables is NOT Les Mis is because of complicated characters like Eponine who reveal more than one dimension. How do you think of Eponine, her tenacity, her pragmatism, her ability to elicit sympathy and still be so cunning at the same time, the grudging respect she eventually earns, and her redemption that ultimately follows...

And see Taylor Swift???

Oh! Me? Noooooo....???

What???

It can’t be me?

I won???

Stop, I can’t believe it!

Open mouth, open mouth, open mouth...

That Taylor Swift???

If you just want cloying and annoying, that’s Taylor Swift. If you want cloying and annoying and also endearing and gritty and contradictory and ultimately human, you go with Lea Michele. And I hate Lea Michele! It’s just...some people were made for certain parts. But Lea Michele doesn’t come with an entire generation of bubblegum snappers who’ll spend $35 each at the movies and probably several times.

You know what I would have liked to see? I would have liked to see Lea Michele going heads up against Anne Hathaway’s Fantine. As it is now? Anne Hathaway is going to DESTROY Taylor Swift. Which, I guess, is the only, ONLY advantage to casting Swift at all.

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