‘A Feeling of Ecstasy’: How Anne Hathaway and FKA Twigs Created Mother Mary’s Thunderous Soundtrack | Anne Hathaway

ADirector David Lowery has been writing for the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of the same name, and has spent a lot of time studying the music over the past 25 years. He’s listened to Taylor Swift (whose musical Reputation inspired the performances in the film), Lorde and FKA twigs, who appears on screen as a psychic named Imogene. But as the film unfolds the haunted love story between Mary (played by Anne Hathaway) and her former best friend and designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), his listening habits change.

“Pop music has disappeared and other music is starting to enter the space,” he says at the A24 offices in New York. He’s sitting next to Branch and Hathaway the next day for the film’s premiere in the city. “James Blake and Aldous Harding captured the emotions I was trying to write between Sam and Mother Mary. They began to help me channel the emotions of the film itself.”

The film is divided into two contrasting modes: Hathaway and Cowell are very much a two-woman play within the confines of designer Sam’s atelier, as the broken and human Mary begs her ex-girlfriend for a very good dress so she can have a proper pop rebirth. The other part is Marie in god-like pop diva mode, commanding the stage with enough other-worldly magnetism to make it clear that this star has created a cult-like multi-generational fanbase. But Hathaway needed to unleash Mother Mary’s broken, desperate, pleading humanity first; She went into the movie pretty much blind to what the songs were going to sound like, except for early demos for Burial and Holy Spirit, which were written by Charli xcx and Jack Antonoff.

“There were almost department heads for different aspects of personality,” she says. “I felt like her voice was pretty low on the totem pole, especially when we started.”

While the film itself is already controversial in early reviews, the music and performance shots have been highly acclaimed. Antonoff and xcx wrote the majority of the soundtrack, with the exception of My Mouth Is Lonely for You, a rousing, shimmering display of twigs left on the cutting room floor during the Eusexua sessions.

“I really liked the lyrics, but I knew they weren’t for me,” Twiggs tells me. I sent two songs to Laurie when he mentioned he needed more for the film. The other is more “ethereal” and is used during a scene showing the dress that Mary orders from Sam. “As soon as David said he needed a song, I knew I had it written [My Mouth Is Lonely for You] For some reason.”

Although Twigs’ contribution is presented separately from the work of xcx and Antonoff, the total soundtrack package paints a very specific and unified picture of the 21st century pop star, big enough to sell out large venues but eccentric enough to have good taste and a sense of avant-garde fashion. It’s no different than what twigs and xcx have experienced recently; Both have been in their careers for more than a decade and recently picked up their first Grammy Awards and major arenas for the first time. However, the implication of both the music and her characterization is that this fictional pop singer has a slightly flamboyant mass appeal. (Fortunately, the film wastes no time analyzing the details of her commercial success, letting the performances and songs speak for themselves.)

“Mother Mary for me is the kind of style that is almost on the other side of the glass from where I am,” Twiggs says. “Even in my line of work, there’s a kind of stardom that I’ve seen through a window that really embodies it. It’s all together and so neat and so perfect and so huge and overwhelming.”

While Hathaway has a background in theater and won an Academy Award for her performance in the musical Les Misérables, the process of recording Laurie’s film was a very new experience. She spent time with Antonoff recording Mother Mary: Greatest Hits, as the soundtrack is aptly named. She needed to explore not only her vocal range, but also how production works. She even changed simple lyrics, having lived with the character long enough to understand what she would or wouldn’t say. Along with Antonoff, she pushed for the kind of layered vocals she heard in Tori Amos’ Little Earthquakes, a big reference for her diving into Mary.

“One of the things I realized is that the lyrics are very important, but the feeling of the words is more important,” she explains. She cites the story of Earth, Wind & Fire’s September recording as an example, recalling how they didn’t quite understand the song’s lyrics or meaning but still found a way to turn it into one of the most instantly recognizable songs of all time. “The way you perform the sound of a word is just as important, if not more so, than the word itself.”

There is a specter that looms over Mary and Sam, but the unspoken ghost in the film is the implicit fandom that Mother Mary has attracted. Laurie felt it unnecessary to explain; It’s evident through the behind-the-scenes scenes and the kind of physical recovery she gets back when she surprises Sam that she pushed her body beyond its limit for these shows. It’s also clear from her name and the everlasting aura she wears that her stardom means a lot to the millions of imaginary fans waiting for her return.

“In the original script, there was a lot of exposition about who Mother Mary was as an artist, the depth of her fan base, and what her songs meant to people,” Hathaway says. Fandom is an abstract idea, suggested through appearance, headlines, and of course, songs. But Hathaway has a clear definition of who is attracted to Mother Mary; It’s not unlike how we see all the other pop stars working these days, where we compare it to “neon plasma” that can only be seen within the confines of a glass container struggling to not shatter the glass and hurt those looking into it.

“Her fans were people who could feel safe around her,” she explains. “They could come to her and feel just as ecstatic as anyone. Everyone was welcome.” “She loved them very much. They were people she saw as weak, people who needed a mother. She was contorting herself into this terrible state to avoid hurting them.”