Meat Loaf is still being remembered for his role in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” 50 years after the musical comedy’s premiere.
Richard O’Brien, who created “Rocky Horror” and starred as the hunchbacked handyman Riff Raff in the beloved cult classic, opened up about the film and Meat Loaf’s time on set while commemorating the movie’s 50th anniversary of its world premiere on Aug. 14.
“Working with Meat Loaf was always fun,” O’Brien, 83, exclusively told The Post. “He was loud and always needed laughter around him all the time, even if things weren’t funny.”
“He was a good old boy,” the actor and writer added. “He was fun.”
“Rocky Horror,” which began as a musical stage production in 1973, was adapted into a feature film in 1975.
Besides starring Meat Loaf as a raucous, motorcycle-riding former delivery boy named Eddie, it also starred Tim Curry (Dr. Frank-N-Furter), Susan Sarandon (Janet Weiss), Barry Bostwick (Brad Majors) and Patricia Quinn (Magenta).
Meat Loaf, whose real name was Michael Lee Aday and who went on to release hits like “I’d Do Anything for Love” and “Bat Out of Hell,” tragically passed away in January 2022 following a serious battle with Covid-19. He was 74.
However, the “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” hitmaker discussed “Rocky Horror” and his role as Eddie years before his shocking death.
“The first two weeks when we were doing the play, all we did was the music; they had not given us a script,” Meat Loaf, who starred in both the stage production and the film, explained in a 2007 interview.
“They come to me on the part of ‘Hot Patootie,’ and Richard O’Brien is here at these rehearsals,” the singer continued. “He said, ‘On this song, you’ll never be able to get all the words in. I wrote it, and I can’t sing all the words.’”
“I looked at him and said, ‘I can sing all the words,’” Meat Loaf recalled. “Nobody could ever get in and just make those words fly through it. I just love telling people ‘I can do that’ and then being able to do it.”
O’Brien also gushed about working with Curry, 79, while looking back at “Rocky Horror” after 50 years.
“Working with Tim was a dream,” O’Brien said of the “Home Alone 2” star. “We were actors, and we approached it very seriously.”
As for Sarandon, 78, and Bostwick, 80, being cast as Janet and Brad, O’Brien said that it was a “happy accident” and the film was “very lucky” to land the pair as its two leads.
“That was fascinating,” he shared. “We’d been doing the stage show for a year and a half, and then arriving into that comes these two hapless Americans who didn’t really know what it was about.”
“But they came into our world, which was perfect,” O’Brien continued. “It was Barry who first came along, and he took Susan along with him, which was just wonderful.”
“Instead of looking for anyone else, looking for a Janet to go with them, there she was, and there they were,” O’Brien added. “It was perfect.”
“Rocky Horror” first premiered at the Rialto Theatre in London, England, on Aug. 14, 1975.
Directed by Jim Sharman with a screenplay by him and O’Brien, the musical comedy horror film is still in limited release 50 years later, making it one of the longest-running theatrical releases in movie history.
“We were all happy,” O’Brien said while looking back on shooting the “Rocky Horror” film. “It didn’t matter how cold it was. We were all happy.”
“We understood what we were doing, and we wanted to make this as good as possible,” he concluded.
