Tag: Monica

The most exciting thing I learned that really helped me in that process was, she said at one point in a New Yorker article, something along the lines of “the pursuit of perfection will rob the art of what makes it really interesting and human and creative.” I can’t remember the exact quote, but I thought that was a really wonderful, beautiful gift. I was so hell-bent on getting her exactly right to a degree that I think I had sort of impossible expectations of myself in this. So, to hear her say that about artwork and perfection allowed me to sort of step back and go, Oh, OK. The last thing on earth I wanna do is rob Joan of all of her spirit and what makes her interesting and a creative, beautiful, wonderful artist. And so I very actively tried to take my sense of perfectionistic thinking and any intention and control I was trying to have on the role and put that on a shelf. [I wanted to] allow for the present moment to step in and trust the work at that point that I had done to gain that musical proficiency.

Well, it certainly paid off. Your voice sounds so phenomenal in the movie. I saw in another interview that you said you never really sang very publicly before this film. What did you do personally to reach a higher level of comfortability? Also, do you feel like music will become more of a passion for you, hobby-wise or even professionally?

I mean, I did have to sort of sing here and there in other contexts, it was just in the most minor of ways. I had done bits and pieces and was terrorized every time. Even for the Top Gun: Maverick audition, I had to sing “Great Balls of Fire” for some reason. But yeah, it really wasn’t a part of my life and… trying to represent someone who, like I said, was known for this—who was completely known for having a beautiful voice—that was just a very intimidating prospect to me. But I tried to borrow her confidence, or at least what we perceive to be her confidence, because I think the interesting thing is she’s actually talked about having a lot of stage fright, which I related to.

But in seeming cool and collected to audiences, I got to borrow from that and in that experience of using her arrangements and trusting the work that I had done and then singing in front of live audiences, I felt a lot of exhilarating emotions around it. I really actually fell in love with working on the music, even just alone in my house. Playing guitar, for me, that became a very emotionally connected experience. I felt like the guitar sort of became an extension of my hands and like this creative voice that I could play with.

I do play now and I’ve written some songs privately. Who knows what I’ll ever do with them, but I’m trying not to put anything on it. I’m not like, “OK, now I do an album,” because I think sometimes we can rob ourselves of a lot of that creative freedom when we decide to present it to people right away or to, you know, monetize it in any way. But yeah, privately in my own way, I have a new relationship with music that that I really love and I’m really grateful for.

Did you have a favorite song of Baez’s or Dylan’s that you found while making this movie or one that you kept turning to that really helped you fit into this role?

Well, “Diamonds and Rust” was a wonderful song. It was written in the ’70s, or at least she released it in the ’70s. It was a very informative song because Joan wrote it about Bob and she gives a lot of information in the most poetic way and there were touch points within that I found helped me in different scenes in the film when working with Timothée. But I mean, I have such a close relationship now with so many of her songs and kind of to the point where anything I sing in the film, I listen to and I still, in my brain, immediately am trying to get closer to her sound. There’s that impulse in me, so it’s a little bit hard to listen to the songs that I do sing in this movie, although I still really love “Silver Dagger.” I still love her interpretations of every song. It’s just, I have to get to a place where I’m no longer in a comparison space where I can just appreciate what she’s done and not beat myself up for what maybe I didn’t accomplish or what I feel I didn’t accomplish.

There’s nothing like working on Bob Dylan songs too. When you work on a song for months and it’s poetically beautiful and it’s saying so much, like “Farewell Angelina,” there’s nothing like that experience. You really get the sense for how brilliant the writing is when you get to spend that much time with it.

You mentioned working with Timmy, so I’m curious—how were you two able to develop such a strong chemistry, and what was it like getting to work with him on this project?

It was phenomenal. I was a huge fan of his work prior to this—it was a part of what made me so excited to get to do this film, you know, along with the fact that James Mangold was directing it. I just felt like I could really trust everything [Timothée] was going to show up with. I heard his recordings in the studio. I knew he was really close to the sound of Bob, and [getting[ progressively closer every month leading up to filming. It just kept sounding more and more like him. I would ask Nick Baxter, our music producer, “Wait, wait, sorry. Was that a Bob or a Timmy?” And that was incredible. So, by the time we were filming and rehearsing together, I was in a place of such deep trust in him and all that he was bringing and I felt like I could stand on two legs with my own preparation as Joan. Then, we could just trust the words on the page and trust what Jim was doing to orchestrate these beautiful scenes.

Obviously the movie is centered around Dylan, but it’s also about the people in his life, specifically the women, who influenced and shaped him. Why do you think it’s so important to see figures like Joan Baez’s perspective?

Well, James Mangold, when I first met him, he talked to me about an inspiration for this movie, which was Amadeus. More specifically, the fact that Mozart doesn’t stand there and tell you who he is; you see who Mozart is by the way he affects the people around him. So in this context, to get to play Joan was kind of a release of pressure in that my job was just to show up fully and to not have to sort of point at what I felt she felt about him or anything like that… I think again, props to Jim, [because] you get a really beautiful vantage point with all of the characters. Ed does such a beautiful job with Pete Seeger and Boyd as Johnny Cash and that friendship that they have. Sylvie—my God, Elle’s performance is so gorgeous. You get all that information and it is a true ensemble act and everyone’s relationship with Bob tells that story completely thanks to Jim’s sort of design.

From my perspective, another element that adds to the richness of the film is the costumes.

Arianne [Phillips, our costume designer] is brilliant. She was like schooling the V&A on certain jackets that Joan had and saying, “Oh, she must have bought this in London, or she might have because she had it in that photo shoot.” Her specificity, her attention to detail is brilliant. She’s so generous and she was willing to let me be barefoot in every scene, in spite of the walls of shoes that she had. She’s lovely.

I feel like so many of the styles have come back from that period. Did any of the pieces overlap at all with your personal style? Or was there a favorite costume of yours from the movie?

Oh my God, yeah. I mean, there’s so much of Joan’s style that I really love, like the drop-waisted dresses. Arianne and I talked a lot about this jacket that she wears in the end. They also custom made that that gorgeous fringe suede jacket that they had images of Joan in. God, I mean, every look was such a joy to wear. The outfit I feel like I want to acquire right now is the one that I got to wear in [the scene at] Joan’s house—the pedal pusher pants, these little Levi’s that fit so perfectly and a little top. That is something that I feel like would translate into my style nicely. [That moment’s] so brief, but I felt so comfortable and it’s like, just sporty enough but also kind of sexy. I love Joan’s style. She’s always been just so herself and so completely cool.

One last fun question: I know you have a background in dance, and I’m curious how you use those skills when inhabiting the physicality of a character, and how you might’ve used it to play Joan?

Well, the interesting thing about dance for me was, I mean, looking at Joan and her performances specifically from 61 to 65, she sort of let loose later but, in this time period, she tended to be quite still in her performance. So I was like, “OK, none of that’s useful to me right now.” But, I do think I was really lucky to have dance at a young age and it taught me how much work it takes to become proficient at something like a technical art form. Even just that physical awareness is a really useful… thing, for lack of a better word.

And a fun [fact] is, at my dance school we were given West African dance classes when I was young. And I realized thanks to documentary footage that Joan’s son was a drummer for some of my West African dance classes, which blew my mind. I was watching a documentary and I was like, “He looks familiar… I wonder why?” And then the next thing you know, it cuts to a scene of him drumming and I was like, “Oh! I knew him growing up.” We haven’t spoken in any capacity. I hope someday we do, but that for me was a really cool moment of connectivity between us and our worlds. I just really loved getting to discover that and then I got to tell [Joan] about that too. She’s like, “Oh, he’ll get a kick out of that.” I was like, “You’re blowing my mind!”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.