Anne Hathaway may be best known as a movie star, but she also grew up singing – and her latest role as fictional pop star Mother Mary in the A24 thriller of the same name casts her voice front and center.
Her skills were showcased early in her career. In 2004 she duetted with Jesse McCartney on the Ella Enchanted soundtrack (for which she sang on three songs) and in 2012, after landing the role of Fantine in Les Misérables, she made her Billboard Hot 100 debut with her rendition of showtune staple “I Dreamed a Dream.”
Still, Hathaway describes Mother Mary as “totally different” from such prior roles. “I’ve never really [considered] myself as a singer,” she says, while seated next to her on-screen and musical collaborator FKA twigs the day after the film’s New York premiere. “I’ve got a decent voice, can carry a tune, but I always felt that I was best in a choir.”
That belief is why she “studied everybody” in pop music while preparing to become a pop star herself. And fortunately, she worked alongside top talent — including Twigs, Jack Antonoff and Charli xcx — on the film’s seven original songs that comprise the soundtrack, Mother Mary: Greatest Hits, which arrived Friday (April 17) on streamers and vinyl. The film, directed by David Lowery, hit theaters the same day.
Hathaway says it took two years to discover Mother Mary’s sound, and that even after songs were finished and filmed, she couldn’t help but continue to tweak them. “I worked on the sound for another year because I wasn’t happy with it,” she admits. “And then, I had broken through to another place. I called David and Jack and I said, ‘I have to come back into the studio. I think I’m onto something – I think it’s finally happening.’ And I just remember going into the studio and Jack sitting up and turning around; he goes, ‘you’ve been working.’ We rerecorded everything.”
That drive is in large part what makes Mother Mary so believable – and is surely why the soundtrack stands so strongly on its own, separate from the film. Hathaway co-wrote four songs (“Holy Spirit,” “Burial,” “Holy Spirit 2” and “Cut Ties”) while Twigs contributed standout track “My Mouth Is Lonely For You,” which she co-wrote with Tobias Jesso Jr. and Jeff Bhasker, among others.
Below, Hathaway and Twigs discuss crafting the music for Mother Mary, what it means to embody a pop star and more.
Anne, you’ve been singing most of your life, but how did performing as Mother Mary compare to other singing roles that you’ve taken on?
Anne Hathaway: I’ve just never taken myself seriously in that way. It was amazing to discover this type of pop music where you can be powerful but also not need to have to project the way that you have to in musical theater.
I also learned that I’m a completely different voice part than I thought. When I was in school, I got placed as a soprano and I could do all of that, but [while working on Mother Mary] everybody kept asking me, “What feels good?” And finally I was like, “Honestly, singing with the boys.” Like, singing like Thom Yorke feels good. And they said, “Okay, great. Then let’s sing that.” And I was like, “It’s okay that I’m a baritone?” That felt very new, that discovery of what felt good as opposed to an external idea of what is good.
Well, now I’d love to hear a Radiohead cover.
We shall see.
Twigs, in addition to writing a track for the soundtrack you also appear in the film as a medium named Imogene. Were you approached for the music or your role first?
Twigs: I was approached for the role first and I filmed everything, not knowing at all I was gonna help with any music. And then I just happened to speak to David, and he was like, “I feel like I need more songs and the deadline’s coming up soon” and I was like, “say less.” I was like, “let me send you some stuff. I’ve got some bits.” And so I just sent him “My Mouth Is Lonely for You,” and I sent him another ethereal song and he really loved it. But “My Mouth Is Lonely for You,” he just instantly was like, “That’s the one.”
Anne, in addition to Twigs, you worked with top pop talent like Jack Antonoff and Charli xcx on the music for Mother Mary. Who did you consult with or study who didn’t directly work on this soundtrack?
Hathaway: I listened to everybody, including Twigs, before I knew that I’d be working with her as a co-star and then musical collaborator, which is amazing. I really just immersed myself in the world of pop — not necessarily to try to sound like anybody, but to see if I could discover patterns. Like, what makes pop pop? Because it’s a very beguiling type of music. It seems so effortless. It seems like anybody could do it. And then, in my experience, when you go into the studio, you realize it feels next to impossible to have that kind of power and ease going for you at the same time, to really find a vibe and sing from that place.
I can hear it in different performers. I can hear how they express themselves through a phrase, how they find the right sound within a sound — and how extraordinary all of you are about how many layers of performance you have going on at the same time, that you’re able to do in a way that makes us believe we could do it too.
Twigs, what patterns of being a pop star did Mother Mary pick up on?
Twigs: I feel like Annie just embodied the confidence. Sometimes I think the best performance is the ability to do nothing. The ability to just stand on stage and not twitch or move your foot a little bit. Just be confident that your head is there, and you are in the light and you can just bask in it for a second. I always was taught when I first started performing, once you go on stage, unless it’s like part of the performance, you don’t fiddle with your bra strap. You go and you just stand. And sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do on stage.
So of course, Annie’s dancing and performance and voice and the whole thing was so beautiful — but the most confident thing is just the ability to just take four steps and stand there. Which I think, when you think of the best performers, like Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston or Tina Turner, you think of them strutting down a catwalk and stopping and hitting the note. It sounds simple, but I think it’s actually almost like a lost talent in this day and age.
Hathaway: Did you ever get to see Tina Turner perform?
Twigs: Not in real life.
Hathaway: I got to see her, and the thing that was amazing was I got to meet her before the show. She had a fever of 103, which they explained to us. And I stood next to her and her temperature was really borderline alarming. And she went out there, and she did a two hour set in heels up and down stairs. Just amazing. And I remember, that was really important to me when I started off on this — I’m just like, “Pop stars are different beasts.”
Twigs, you touch on that idea in the film, when your character Imogene asks Mary, “What does this do to you?” How did that question guide the music?
Twigs: I made the song before I knew of the line, so it didn’t affect me in that way. For me, it’s actually the intimacy of certain performances that can affect my energy more than really big ones. When I perform at a festival, to 60-80,000 people, you almost become a collective. It’s such a shared experience that the energy doesn’t affect me. Whereas times when I’ve performed for really small audiences, that’s when it can feel more chilling. You can really see someone’s look of approval or disapproval or enchantment or whatever it is they’re feeling… I don’t know whether it’s because I started singing in cabaret clubs. What was your experience?
Hathaway: Everything I did with Mother Mary began from a place of such intense vulnerability, like, almost in a braced and crouched position of “what have I done? Why did I say yes to this? Why am I putting myself through this?” And then just again and again, the submission to, “Well, you did say yes, so you go out there and do it.”
For me, it’s actually a really positive question. I think the assumption was, “What does it take from you?” But in this case, it’s given me so much. I’ve learned to get out of the braced, crouched position that much faster. Believe in yourself a little bit more. Trust the people around you and just push yourself and maybe enjoy it more. Because the process can be humiliating, but hopefully, in this case, it did wind up making me a better performer, a more confident performer. And I’ve taken that with me on to other jobs.
Were you going into the studio as Mary, or who were you showing up as when you went to record these songs?
Hathaway: I didn’t know, man. I didn’t know. I actually called Jack before I went in for my first [session], I’m like, “What do you wear?” And he was like, “Something you wanna sit in.” But I felt like I needed to have something that was a little swaggy — because if I don’t have any energy in my clothes, I think that my sound will be somehow flat. And so I tried to find things that made me feel a little elevated, but that I could be in for eight hours.
Twigs: Like what?
Hathaway: I have this black slip dress and I paired it with this beautiful Saint Laurent vest that I have, and I wore it with these mesh ballet flats. And I brought a big hoodie, but I just remember there was something about the strappiness of it that made me feel like… I love that it was like a nightgown, but it was a sexy nightgown.
Anne, you’ve called “Like a Prayer” and “…Baby One More Time” the ultimate pop songs. Of Mother Mary’s catalog, which is her ultimate pop song?
Hathaway: It’s not really a pop song, it’s something else, but the song… it’s hard. I love them all… and it was fun, because there’s only seven of them. Each one of them has their own distinct personality. There’s no repeats. I love “My Mouth Is Lonely for You,” because I feel like I could drop it and everybody would stop what they were doing and just start to sway. There’s a song in there called “Dark Cradle” that just turns the whole world into a movie when you’re listening to it. Also I know the dance to it, so that feels really fun to be able to do.
But the song that touches me deeply in that way that you can’t really explain is “Cut Ties.” You only hear a snippet of it in the movie, but that was the most fulfilling creative experience I had recording it. We really went back again and again on that one. And I love that there’s an ugliness to the sound. I was happy for [Mary], because I feel like so much of her pop music was about delivering [for] other people, and “Cut Ties” was really expressing something savage inside of her. It’s probably not one of her most popular tracks, it’s a deep cut.
Anne, now that you know what to wear to a studio and you have these collaborators in your orbit, has it inspired you to keep working on music?
Hathaway: Oh, I feel like I’m more of a guest in this world. But honestly, just what it takes to do all of that, to keep your instrument at its top level, I find that the work I do on films pulls me away from it. The thing that was so beautiful about getting to do Mother Mary is I just pushed everything else that was taking time and my attention – with the exception of my family – off to the margins, and I kept it there for the years that we made this movie. So I could just focus on this.
But the truth is, that unless I fully change careers, I don’t have that level, that ability to offer myself to it. And I do think that it requires that. And also like, I got to work with FKA twigs. I got to work with Jack Antonoff and Charli xcx. I started at the top. What am I gonna do now? I think I’m just gonna quit while I’m ahead.
