Simon Helberg Rented an Airbnb to Practice Piano for ‘Florence Foster Jenkins’

In the upcoming film, Florence Foster Jenkins, Simon Helberg plays Cosme McMoon, the titular character’s skittish yet talented personal pianist. Helberg himself plays the piano, dating back to high school. Before meeting with director Stephen Frears, he’d intended to mention that he could “probably play” the songs McMoon had to play. But, as he told the Los Angeles Times, “by the end of the meeting, I was like, ‘I’m a professional classical pianist, and I can play anything.’”

After selling himself hard like that, Helberg had to get months of practice in, so he rented an Airbnb with a piano in Los Angeles’s Koreatown neighborhood. Being the inquisitive, hard-hitting interviewers we are, we here at Yahoo Movies decided to ask him how that went down. Like, did he meet the owner?

“Has he gone missing?” Helberg jokingly asked. “Is that what’s happening? Look, he said a couple of nasty things about my piano playing, so he had to go.

“No, I did meet him. And he’s probably very happy — if he sees this interview, he’ll be very happy that he’s come up. He was really nice, and he had a piano in this big room in Koreatown, and it was a great apartment, and I went in and I sort of practiced till I couldn’t move anymore. Yeah, [an] Airbnb, it’s a good place to get ready for your big breakout role.”

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