“What struck me right away, reading the script, is that you can’t ‘perform’ Mother Mary,” Hathaway told Vogue. “If I got the part, I would have to become material David could craft with.” Sounds…scary. According to the story, Hathaway was tasked with transforming herself into an international pop star complete with elaborate headdresses, exhausting choreography, and a lot of emotions.
“I’d say, ‘You have to show me how you’re feeling with your body,’” the film’s choreographer, Dani Vitale, recalled to the magazine. “You can’t tell me you’re angry; show me…I remember that first day, being like, Oh no. Because she’s [Hathaway] like a doll, you know? So pretty, so graceful. I thought, Oh God, I have to break this person.” OK, forget scary. We’re approaching terrifying territory now. Maya Singer, the writer who spoke to Hathaway, concurred.
“I’ve been tiptoeing around this, but now I’ll just come out and say it: Mother Mary is a very weird movie,” Singer writes. “Much of the story turns on the making of a dress—which is spectacular—and most of the film is just Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel hanging out in a barn.” Now, while that doesn’t sound so nightmarish, it’s damn near bizarre. Per Hathaway’s recollection, they spent so much time in the barn that “everyone on the shoot went temporarily, mildly insane.”
“David’s writing is so vivid—we were forced into an intensity,” Coel told Vogue, adding that she and Hathaway blew off steam in Berlin nightclubs after particularly taxing shoot days. “It’s very brave work that she’s done. Look at that dance in the barn—it’s scary,” she added in reference to a solo performance of Hathaway’s that—according to Singer—surpasses “emotional nudity.” Vitale noted that the crew, many of whom were “massive German men,” all dissolved into tears afterward…
