The one thing Elton didn’t want to talk about for Rocketman

Elton John was an open book when it came to his addiction or tempestuous relationships in Rocketman, but John’s marriage to Renate Blauel in Sydney was downplayed despite being one of the biggest stories of the year in 1984.

After appearing in action blockbusters such as Kingsman: The Secret Service and Robin Hood, crime dramas including Legend and Billionaire Boys Club and comedies Eddie the Eagle and Sing, Taron Egerton reckons he knows a thing or two about acting.

But having signed on to play the pop great Elton John in the fantasy biopic Rocketman and agreed to do all his own singing, he realised he had a lot to learn in the music caper.

While he had sung on screen before — his version of John’s classic I’m Still Standing in the animated hit Sing was one of the reasons he got the Rocketman gig — he knew that reproducing some of the best loved pop tunes in music history was a different prospect entirely.

Elton John and Taron Egerton promoting Rocketman at the Cannes Film Festival. Picture: AFP

John and his partner David Furnish were heavily involved in the making of Rocketman, which uses the UK singer’s extensive back catalogue in all manner of creative ways to trace his unlikely rise from unloved suburban kid to super-stardom, the drug-induced fall that nearly killed him and triumphant return to the top.

But even with respected producer Giles Martin (son of Beatles sonic guru George) in his corner and John keeping a respectful distance, Egerton says he craved approval of the man who had invited him into his home, let him read his tour diaries and even gifted him his first diamond earring as a keepsake.

“Elton being a creative person himself understands that people need freedom to be at their best,” says Egerton.

“That being said, I couldn’t resist sending him rough mixes of an evening after a beer or two. The performance is the performance and of course I want him to love it. I know my craft — but the music is very much his craft, and I think I needed to know we were moving the right direction.”

Egerton clearly did something right.

At the world premiere of Rocketman in Cannes last week he watched the tears roll down the flamboyant singer’s face as he saw the movie that had been two decades in the making for the first time.

John later said that “it was so like myself that I didn’t think it was an actor playing me, which is the biggest compliment that I could possibly pay him”.

Taron Egerton says Elton John was protective of his former wife Renate, whom he married in Sydney in 1984

While John was open book on his tempestuous relationship with former manager John Reid (played by Game Of Thrones actor Richard Madden), his distant parents (played by Bryce Dallas Howard and Steven Mackintosh) and his writing partner Bernie Taupin (played by Jamie Bell), Rocketman treads more carefully with the singer’s four-year marriage to German record producer Renate Blauel.

Their marriage in Sydney in 1984 was one of the biggest stories of the year, but the episode is downplayed in the film, largely it would seem out of respect for Blauel.

“I think she was a truly wonderful person and I think if he is protective of that episode it’s only because I think that’s what she has asked for,” says Egerton.

“So it would be remiss of me to speak of it at length but what I will say is that he told me that he loved her — he just didn’t have the right equipment. He’s just not wired up that way.

“I think he tried to be — he said that he loved her and that she was a wonderful person and that they had some really good times. I think they probably had some quite bad times as well.”

Elton John and Taron Egerton performing during the Rocketman Gala Party at the Cannes Film Festival. Picture: Getty

Rocketman director Dexter Fletcher, who already had some rock biopic runs on the board as the man roped in to rescue the mega-hit Bohemian Rhapsody after original director Bryan Singer was fired, says that Egerton was a natural to play John.

The pair had already worked together on Eddie the Eagle, and Fletcher and Rocketman co-producer Matthew Vaughn saw something in the 29-year-old Brit that could keep the audience onside even through some of the singer’s most extreme excesses of sex, drugs and rock and roll.

“Taron has this brilliant quality of being very determined and focused and committed but he also has this honestly and vulnerability to him,” Fletcher says.

“That allows him to create a character of Elton that we think we know from 30 years ago who can be a bit of a s--- — not to put too fine a point on it — but also still be human and make you understand that we all have our bad days.”

Fletcher was introduced to the larger-than-life world of John, who is now 29 years sober, when he was invited to a lunch meeting to pitch his vision for the much-delayed Rocketman, which in various earlier incarnations was to star Justin Timberlake and then Tom Hardy. Problem was Fletcher was in London and John was in Vegas.

“I had never been further for lunch with someone than five miles before and I had to go two and a half thousand miles and I knew I was going on a very different journey,” he says with a laugh.

Taron Egerton as Elton John in a scene from Rocketman.

“I was not in Kansas any more. We sat and had this lunch in Vegas and we were meant to be there for an hour and he sat there and said ‘ask me anything you want — there is nothing out of bounds’. So I already knew we were in good shape there because I was looking to give an honest a portrayal as possible.

“But that lunch ended up being four hours long as he expounded very eloquently and generously talked about anything and everything that I cared to ask him.”

Egerton was also the beneficiary of John’s honesty and generosity, after they hit it off right away when John made a cameo in the second Kingsman move, The Golden Circle.

Egerton was welcomed into the home the singer shares with Furnish and their two children eight-year-old Zachary and six-year-old Elijah.

He says he saw kindred spirit in John and the two have become “very close”.

“I like men who are comfortable with talking about how they feel,” says Egerton.

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“And that’s who Elton is. I have just found him to be supportive in the extreme, very kind and very interested in me and not just when ‘me’ pertains to how he will appear in his life story.”

Rocketman opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday.