Comment

MERYL Streep is best known for her serious roles in films like Out Of Africa, so it's hard to imagine her as a Lycra-clad blonde, belting out Super Trouper.

But this is precisely what the two-time Oscar-winner does in the summer's brightest blockbuster - the film adaptation of the Abba musical Mamma Mia!

We meet at an elegant hotel in London. Meryl looks her usual demure self - but she's mischievous, and keen to dispel the idea she's out of place in musicals.

"I've done a lot of musicals. My first Broadway show was a musical and I'd done a lot of musicals in high school, so it was like coming home to a thing that I always loved doing.

"I haven't done many because I haven't done much stage, even though I wanted to, in a long time."

She plays Donna, a hippy mum running a guest house on a Greek island, whose only daughter Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to get married.

Unknown to Donna, Sophie has pinched her mum's diary and invited three of her potential fathers (played by Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgard) to her wedding - men her mum hasn't seen in 20 years.

Cue much mayhem in the heat as Sophie tries to work out which man is her dad and Donna tries to chase them off the island - all set to various Abba classics.

One of the funniest moments comes at Sophie's hen party, when Donna and her best friends (played by Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) squeeze back into their platform boots and flares to perform as 1970s band Donna and the Dynamos.

Meryl, who recently turned 59 but doesn't look anywhere near it, fell in love with Mamma Mia! long before she was singled out to play Donna, after watching it on Broadway in 2001. "I took my ten-year-old and her birthday party right after it had opened. It was after September 11 and everyone was really low and I thought, What am I going to do with all these kids?'," she explains.

"I took the kids and we were all just dancing in the aisles and down the street. I bought the cast album and sang the songs for two years.

"And I wrote a note to the cast to basically say Thank you for the music' and thank you for the injection of joy that was so needful at that moment."

The actress, who has four children with her husband of almost 30 years Don Gummer, admits she was apprehensive about her now grown-up offspring seeing their mum in psychedelic 1970s gear.

"I was nervous, but then I showed them all the stills and they've already had their mortification moment about me wearing spandex.

"My son will be appalled, but I think he'll actually like it because he's a musician and he'll get a kick out of it.

"He appreciates music and this music is much trickier and more precise than I thought when I first sang along to the radio."

The cast certainly had to work hard to get all the songs - and dance moves - perfect. Initial filming took place on the 007 stage at London's Pinewood studios, before they transferred to the Greek islands.

"Voulez Vous goes by like this in the movie," says Meryl, snapping her fingers, "but it was so hard to get those steps right. We worked on it three weeks before we began shooting."

At this point Meryl spontaneously breaks into a rendition of the catchy tune, whilst swinging her arms and breathing heavily to show how strenuous it was.

"It goes so fast and there's 150 people on set and it's the only number where everyone's dancing at once - the whole cast and every dancer in London I think!

"They played those disco lights eight hours a day and the migraine set in, but we couldn't wait to get there in the morning and do it again because it was so fun!"

As well as the big numbers with the cast, Meryl also sings a duet - SOS - with Pierce Brosnan and then sings The Winner Takes It All to him just before Sophie's wedding.

She says: "I've sung all of these songs about 70,000 times, starting in my closet, which was the only place my family would allow me to practise, all the way to Pinewood and the place in Holland Park where we were living. Those poor neighbours!

"But I never got sick of singing the songs. Never, never, never."

After nine weeks at Pinewood, the cast headed to Skiathos and Skopelos.

Meryl says the transition wasn't too hard in terms of filming, but admits: "Greece was nicer!"

However, it was the lengthy Pinewood shoot that helped the cast bond, she says.

"People who are in plays get to have that experience, whereas for most movies people fly in, do their bit and fly out. But because we were incarcerated in that barn, trying to learn Voulez Vous for three weeks, that's all we talked about.

"Colin was so worried, Stellan was beside himself and Pierce was drenched in sweat every day, but we all bonded over it. We were a company and we lived together."

12:05pm Friday 11th July 2008

Print

Email this

Comment

Add your comment

Name:
Email: *
Location:
**
	e.g. 123-123
Comment: Please note: All HTML tags will be ignored. Format Text:
By posting a comment, I confirm that I have read and agree to the terms of use. Comments are not moderated but we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention and we may delete inappropriate postings. Please treat other people with respect. You must not post anything that is abusive, indecent, unlawful or defamatory. Remember, you are personally liable for what you post on this site. If you wish to complain about a comment, contact us here.
* Your email address will not be displayed ** To avoid register now or login

Submit your event to our FREE calendar listings