
New details have emerged about David Lowery’s Mother Mary courtesy of a new Vogue cover story featuring its Oscar winning star Anne Hathaway.
The A24 film casts Hathaway as the title character, a pop star described as a Lady Gaga-meets-Taylor Swift hybrid who flees a tour and winds up seeking out an old friend and fashion designer (Michaela Coel) who helped shape her public persona. Based on interviews Vogue writer Maya Singer included in the piece, Mother Mary sounds like a challenging project for all involved, or at least “intense” per Singer who describes the (nearly) finished product as “a very weird movie.”
Much of the film “turns on the making of a dress, which is spectacular,” and most of the action finds Hathaway and Coel hanging out in a 13th century barn where those involved may have gone “temporarily, mildly insane,” Singer writes. There are “a couple demented flashbacks” and scenes featuring Hathaway pushing herself to the limit.
“What struck me right away, reading the script, is that you can’t ‘perform’ Mother Mary,” said Hathaway, styled in Givenchy by Sarah Burton. “If I got the part, I would have to become material David could craft with.”
The filmmaker likened his experience to shooting Apocalypse Now, specifically a “pivotal sequence” that takes place near the end. “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.’ And Michaela took her hands and said, ‘I love you, I trust you.’ We were in various stages of that for about a week, shooting that scene,” Lowery said.
Coel credited Hathaway with “very brave work” on a specific dance number she performed in the barn. “The physicality she had to learn in preparation for this job — and it’s not just us in the barn, it’s the crew, it’s the producers, and so of course this day was terrifying, a little monster on her shoulder, but no one realized until after the first take. And then to keep doing it — take after take. That requires a lot of strength. Gallons and tons.”
Choreographer Dani Vitale said the crew, comprised of massive German men, all broke into tears when Hathaway was finished. “It was the craziest day. I mean, everyone got challenged. But it made us all super close. It’s like David started a cult by accident.”
Annie Leibovitz/Courtesy of Vogue
The film, which was shot in and around Cologne, Germany, features original songs by superstars Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX and a supporting cast that includes Coel, FKA twigs, Hunter Schafer and Kaia Gerber. Singer reveals that Hathaway started filming Mother Mary before any of the songs were complete, meaning that she didn’t know the sound of the pop star she was meant to embody.
“I had to submit to being a beginner,” Hathaway tells Vogue of the experience, which she also described as the most challenging role of her entire career. “The humility of that — showing up every day knowing you’re going to suck. And it has to be okay. 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.”
One that she ultimately found gratitude for. “It was so confusing,” she added. “I had to learn…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.”
In an email interview with Vogue, Charli XCX said that she and Antonoff were able to look at footage from the film as inspiration for what they would ultimately write together. “Anne’s movement was super graphic, very thrashing and jerky and bold in this super magical and scary way. It felt volatile and gripping, so Jack and I went away and thought about that.”
The Vogue piece also features some compliments from Hathaway’s friend and fellow Oscar winner Bradley Cooper. “You see how she treats everyone — and it’s everyone — she’s so kind,” said Cooper, who spent quality time with Hathaway and husband Adam Shulman during the pandemic. He also called her “very present and grounded” as well as “viciously intelligent.”
Annie Leibovitz/Courtesy of Vogue
Annie Leibovitz/Courtesy of Vogue
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