Anne Hathaway had to shed her Oscar-winning musical background for David Lowery’s “Mother Mary.” The indie film, which centers on Hathaway’s pop star character, features original songs written by Charli XCX and Jack Antonoff. While Hathaway did record the vocals for the tracks, the music was not finalized during the filming of “Mother Mary,” leading Hathaway to ad-lib the onscreen singing scenes.
“It was so confusing. I had to learn,” she told Vogue. “Because if I’d had the music a year before we ever turned a camera on, I would have tattooed every note of it on my soul, and there would have been a whole process, very specific. And that was not available to me. In the end. I am very grateful I could not take control.”
The “Odyssey” actress actually had to tap into relearning certain parts of acting. “I had to submit to being a beginner,” she said. “The humility of that — showing up every day knowing you’re going to suck. And it has to be OK. You’re not ‘bad.’ You’re just a beginner. Getting to that mindset — I had to shed some things that were hard to shed. It was welcome. But it was hard, the way transformational experiences can be hard.”
Hathaway’s character is described as “a sort of Gaga–Taylor Swift hybrid.” Michaela Coel plays a fashion designer who becomes entangled in Mother Mary’s web. Coel, who went to techno clubs with Hathaway to prepare for her role, said that “it’s very brave work that [Hathaway has] done.”
Writer/director Lowery even cited just how intense the production got at one point. While shooting a pivotal scene for the end of the film, Hathaway became fully immersed in the moment. “At one point Annie broke down and said, ‘I have to apologize, because I think what’s going to come out of me will hurt you,’” Lowery recalled. “And Michaela took her hands and said, ‘I love you, I trust you.’”
Lowery added, “It felt like shooting ‘Apocalypse Now.’”
The filmmaker previously said during the Melbourne International Film Festival that “Mother Mary” is a “weird, weird film,” that is in part inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
“I’m in the edit right now [for ‘Mother Mary’] and I have been wondering, ‘What is this movie?’” Lowery said. “I know what I set out to make and that is indeed what I’ve made, but it is so wild. It is a movie I am sure will provoke a lot of strong feelings, in every possible direction. It feels very true to who I am, and very close to me, but it is also consistently surprising me in ways that I did not anticipate.”