Meryl Streep hit Australia this week to talk up her song-and-dance role in Abba blockbuster musical Mamma Mia! She also spared some time for Russell Baillie
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Well, she doesn't sound like a serious actress. She sounds like someone having a very good time. The day before the Melbourne premiere of Mamma Mia!, Meryl Streep is much given to peals of laughter. The 59-year-old's enthusiasm is running away with her - arguably, just as it does in the film (see review below). She sang in some of her previous movies but nothing quite like this.
Mamma Mia! might be her frothiest fare yet but it comes as part of a resurgence for the long-reigning queen of the American screen.
How are you enjoying the ride with this one? It's one thing to make the film but then you get dragged around the world talking about it.
It's a great pleasure on this one. It's not a chore when you love the movie and when people seem to reciprocate the feeling. So it's great fun. And it's interesting to go right across cultures and see that people have similar reactions [to the film]. It confirms everything I believe about human nature.
You went to the original Abba studios to record some of the songs with Benny Andersson. That must have been a little intimidating.
I only really did The Winner Takes It All there for one morning and then I went in a second day after shooting had been completed to clean up some of the tracks for the soundtrack album ... the original studio is a tiny little basement studio. They hadn't changed the shag carpet hung on the walls for acoustic baffle since the 70s. And it was the same microphone that Agnetha [Faltskog] sang Winner Takes It All in back then.
And its closets are full of vintage jumpsuits?
Oh no, but it was full of ghosts - I will tell you that.
Your Mamma Mia! character, Donna, is a little less complicated than most of the women you have played on screen before. What did you think of her?
She seemed very familiar to me. She seemed like a gal I might know. It's interesting that you say less complicated but to me she contends with all the things that modern women try to handle. She's elbow deep in the mechanics of her life, trying to keep things running and the household working and the kitchen going and the plumbing on track. And at the same time she is a romantic and has dreams for her lost love and she's a practical parent and is thinking about her child and her child's future.
This is just everything that everybody I know thinks about all the time. It's sort of all the stages of a woman's life - and her girlfriends and how centrally important those relationships are for your soul.
It's different for a man I think. They have their friends they watch a game with or they drink with. But the real sharing of everything personal is something that women understand and do.
Aside from the singing, was she easy to play?
In a way it wasn't a leap of imagination to understand her but I didn't think she was any less complex than any of the women that I have played because she runs the gamut here - musically, physically, emotionally. She goes to a lot of different towns and visits.
She just happens to burst into song every five minutes.
Yeah.
Do you think you could have played her on stage?
Well ... why not? It just seems ... the thing about the stage is I have had to forgo anything that isn't like eight weeks long because that is the length of my kids' summer vacation, and as much as I love theatre I haven't been able to commit to being gone all night and all weekend. They would love for me to be gone all night and all weekend but it's not going to happen. I have one more in school so maybe at the end of this year I could do the stage.
There's the story of the note of appreciation you sent to the cast of the Broadway production after you saw it in 2001 which seems to imply that this helped you get the role.
I think it's extraordinary that circulated because it's so sad to me. I had my 10-year-old's birthday party with six little girls and I didn't troop them all backstage. And if I can't go backstage and I love the performance, I generally write a note to the cast and these were all working actors. No one was famous and I just felt they deserved to hear how much their work was appreciated, especially at that time. It was right after 9/11.
[The kids] went singing and dancing out of the theatre. We had to go and get them Abba CDs and they all went home and danced to them. That was something the cast should know. I didn't know they were going to photocopy those notes and send them to England, to the producer and that seven years later they were going to make a film. It was about appreciating the work of unknown actors.
Did you have to audition?
I wasn't aware that I was auditioning. But Benny flew over to New York and we went into the bowels of Lincoln Center to a rehearsal room and he said, "We just want to check the keys to see if the keys are right for you," and I said, "Oh okay." Halfway through I realised this was the audition and that if I hadn't been as full-throated and happy as I was I would have been bumped from the project. But I didn't know that going in. I did scare myself about halfway through thinking that if I didn't do well, this was going to be it.
Much has already been made of "look at Meryl Streep singing and dancing, way out of her comfort zone, isn't it surprising?" But given your past roles, your comfort zone must be pretty wide really.
I don't know. I just think a lot of women my age are capable of much more generally than what is asked of us by the scripts we are given. There are lots of people who are better dancers. But we are never asked to do much physically, we are never taken to our capacity.
Still, you seem to have been working hard in the last five or six years and not always in serious roles either - like Adaptation or The Devil Wears Prada.
I've just had a lot of opportunities. In the last year I have made six films and I had never made more than three in a year. The last two haven't come out yet. But I have never worked so much, even when I was young and happening.
Are you making yourself available for a wider range of things?
I've always been available darling, but I don't know why. It's pretty great. I am not looking the gift horse in the mouth.
To be cynical, is it: "What we need in this movie is a Meryl Streep"?
A Meryl Streep. One of the many?
Well your brand is so strong and enduring. If they can get you, they will.
Well, that's a change. That's great. From your mouth to God's ear.
Let's finish on Mamma Mia! Did you get to keep the clothes?
No. I think they made soup out of those overalls. I never want to see them again. I am hoping they auction them off for a good cause.
