Hello, Lili! The new trailer for The Danish Girl dropped on Tuesday, Sept. 1, and it features Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne transforming into a transgender woman named Lili Elbe.
The teaser begins with Alicia Vikander's character happily recalling her initial feelings for her handsome husband, Danish artist Einar Wegener (Redmayne). "I was sure," she gushes to their friends. "He was so shy… and mysterious."
Then, the mystery is unveiled. "That fact is… I believe that I am a woman," Redmayne's character says in the emotional teaser for the film, which is based on the true story of the successful artist. He then seeks to undergo a sex change. (Elbe was one of the first transgender women identified in history to have received a sex reassignment surgery in 1930.)
"It's my only hope," Einar adds. "This is not my body. I have to let it go."
Redmayne — who won a Best Actor Academy Award this past March for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in 2014's The Theory of Everything — reunited with his Les Miserables director, Tom Hooper, for The Danish Girl.
In a recent interview with OUT magazine, the British star opened up about the burden and the importance of the role. “I felt like, I’m being given this extraordinary experience of being able to play this woman, but with that comes this responsibility of not only educating myself but hopefully using that to educate [an audience],” he shared. “Gosh, it’s delicate. And complicated.”
Luckily, the trans community was open and receptive about educating the actor. “People were so kind and generous with their experience," Redmayne told OUT. “Virtually all of the trans men and women I met would say, ‘Ask me anything.’ They know that need for cisgender people to be educated.”
Watch the trailer above. The Danish Girl hits theaters on Nov. 27.
