“It was scary,” says the actress, who plays the Mancunian founder of the Shakers religious movement in Mona Fastvold’s Venice premiere
Shortly after deciding on a musical biopic as her third feature, Mona Fastvold knew she wanted Amanda Seyfried to play the lead role in The Testament Of Ann Lee, the story of an 18th-century Mancunian who founded the Shakers and emigrated to the US where she established her ascetic religious order.
“I met Mona when I was in my early twenties,” says the now 40-year-old Seyfried, but the pair did not work together until 2023 Apple TV miniseries The Crowded Room, for which Fastvold directed three episodes. “That was a trip and we learned quickly that we work well together. I respond to her direction, her clarity and her confidence in what she’s doing.”
Such faith was essential for the role Fastvold was pitching Seyfried. After all, as the actress notes, “this was going to be a musical unlike any other”.
The Testament Of Ann Lee, which premiered at Venice Film Festival and was then picked up for release in the US, UK and most of the world by Searchlight Pictures, traces the journey of Lee from working-class drudgery in the north of England to her spiritual epiphany and spreading her gospel across New England.
The screenplay was written by Fastvold and her partner Brady Corbet, who are also among the film’s producers, and have collaborated in various capacities on all their features to date. Composer Daniel Blumberg, who won an Oscar and Bafta for his work on Corbet’s The Brutalist, wrote the score, which incorporates songs and spirituals from the 18th century. But Fastvold’s film is far from a conventional musical.
“It just didn’t make sense until I started living and breathing it,” Seyfried remembers of working through the musical sequences. “I learned to embrace that difference.”
The challenges she faced in the role were daunting, both in capturing the character and conveying the physicality of an order that requires its congregation’s bodies to be overcome with a spirit so strong they shake uncontrollably. “I was curious as to how she was going to create this,” recalls the actress. “Seeing the script with all the songs written into it was like reading a different language.”
The combination of characterisation, speech, singing and movement was daunting. “It all added to my fear because I didn’t fully understand what that was going to be like.”
Fastvold tapped into Seyfried’s unease but surrounded her with a team that would help her fully realise Ann Lee. “I worked with Tanera Marshall, the accent coach, as early as I could,” says Seyfried who, for inspiration, turned to Bolton-born actress Maxine Peake. “I watched footage of her, listened to podcasts and an audiobook by her. Her voice is incredible and I learned to understand [the cadences] well. She was a beacon.”
Alongside the voice training, Seyfried – an Oscar nominee for her portrayal of actress Marion Davies in David Fincher’s Mank – worked with choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall. “We would go to this little dance studio and work for six hours at a time. I didn’t even think I could dance for that long,” she says.
It was during these sessions that the two developed movements, all based on research of the era, to convey Lee’s spiritual rapture through her physicality. “It can take me a while to learn things and to make them my own,” notes Seyfried of the process. “But that’s what changes you, what enhances your life – doing hard things and coming through the other side.”
The experience was not easy. “You know what? It was fucking exhausting. At one point, I didn’t think I had any more to give. But we came back to it the next day. Again, it was tough. And we did it again. I just kept waking up each day, ready to do it again.”
Nowhere are the extremes of the role more pronounced than in the performance of the birthing song ‘Beautiful Treasures’. “It was like performance art,” says Seyfried, who also sang in Tom Hooper’s take on Les Misérables and the two Mamma Mia! films. “Everything became so elevated for me spiritually, to reach that kind of ecstasy. In some strange way, I felt I was 10 feet tall when I was singing [that song].”
The experience of the scene, with the other actors and musicians playing alongside her, proved transformative. “As an artist, when you use your body, if you push it hard enough, it can take you somewhere. That opportunity does not come along often, but when you have that chance, you have to utilise it, to use your body, your voice, to transform.”
Shape shifter
It is not the first time Seyfried has shown such transformative qualities. She gave a Primetime Emmy award-winning performance as convicted biotech entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes in the 2022 Hulu series The Dropout.
In one episode, Seyfried details Holmes’ transformation from nerdy Stanford University dropout into an image-conscious executive who attracted billions of dollars in investment. The scene shows how Holmes changes both her physicality and voice. Seyfried achieves a similar thing in Fastvold’s film, albeit in a more primal way. But, for the actress, it is the same process.
“I get to trick you!” she exclaims. “Not as an imposter, but I’ve learned to find a way to disappear in a character.” There are two key factors. “Preparation is everything, but that alone wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t do anything without the team, from Mona, Brady, Daniel, Celia and Tanera to the incredible cast.”
That enthusiasm for the people she works with crosses over to another recent project, Paul Feig’s The Housemaid, a psychological thriller adapted from Freida McFadden’s 2022 bestseller, which co-stars Sydney Sweeney. “It’s batshit crazy. Dark. Insane. But so much fun. It feels like new territory for Paul, and it was great to work on.”
During the filming of Ann Lee, Fastvold joined Corbet for the premiere of The Brutalist at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it won the Silver Lion for best director. Back in Budapest, where principal photography for The Testament Of Ann Lee took place, that film’s success gave hope to the cast and crew.
“It felt like that film was paving the way for us,” says Seyfried. And like The Brutalist, The Testament Of Ann Lee dares to be different, notes the actress. “And you know what? I’m prouder of this than I’ve ever been in my life. Because [Mona] did the impossible. She made a musical based on the life of the creator of the Shaker movement who happened to be a woman.”
No comments yet