By Philip Berk May 2008
She could well be the best kept secret of the year.
Who knew!
When Phyllida Lloyd was first announced as director for the film version of Momma Mia, the presumption was that by going with the original stage director, the producers were more interested in cost cutting than cutting edge cinema.
But what people didn’t know (although Meryl Streep must have when she signed on to play the lead) is that Lloyd happens to be one of the Britain’s most acclaimed directors.*
A quick look at her resume reveals
a) she is the equal of Stephen Daldry and Sam Mendes
b) in the theatre she’s directed everything from Shakespeare to David Mamet, from Marlowe to John Guare.
c) she has won accolades for her productions of The Threepenny Opera, La Boheme, Peter Grimes, even Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
The mystery is why she ever undertook such a conventional musical as Mamma Mia. But the good news is it’s made her a comfortably rich woman.
On the set of Mamma Mia she is characteristically modest and unassuming.
Had she ever worked in film before?
“Actually I directed one film for television for the BBC two years ago but nothing on this scale, although I started my career on studio floors, working again for the BBC, so I have been around cameras and studios.”
Was she surprised when she was asked to direct the film?
“I had decided after a bit of self canceling that because Mamma Mia had given me so much freedom to work wherever I wanted to work and so much creative happiness worldwide, I was just not going to be upset if I heard that Bill Condon had got the gig or Lasse Halstrom or various other people. I just thought, let it go; maybe it’s a bit of a Buddhist thing, not that I’m a Buddhist, but there is that thing that when you stop wanting something somehow it suddenly lands in your lap. So I managed to conquer my envy of all these people who I had heard were being interviewed. In the end I feel really lucky and I have to reassure myself that I wasn’t given the gig out of sentimentality. I think it’s mainly because Judy (Craymer, the producer) genuinely believed she would get more of Mamma Mia on the screen if I were involved, and if we all three stuck together including Catherine (Johnson the writer) what we call the Mamma Mia factor might end up on the screen.”
How did she get the news?
“She just rang me up and said, ‘I’ve finally got a draft of the screenplay. I’d like you to read it, and if you like it, would you direct?’ Of course there were a few hoops to go through in Los Angeles, but we had a lot of support from Playtone (Tom Hanks’s production company.) Obviously there was nervousness about a stage director making the transition? It hasn’t always worked. But I come from a very similar background as two of my colleagues, Stephen Daldry and Sam Mendes, who were very supportive, so I thought, if they can do it, so can I. If that doesn’t sound too cheeky.”
Some musicals, to be successful, have to be reinvented for its transfer to film. What has been her approach?
“The one advantage we had was Mamma Mia is set on a island and in fact Judy first thought of it as a movie; so we were itching to be able to free it onto its real space. It wasn’t a show that was stuck in a theatre so it felt like a natural transition.”
Meryl Streep obviously brings a lot to the project.
“Well, Meryl’s two things. I mean she’s everything. As someone watching her the the other day said ‘She cries the world’s tears, and she laughs the world’s laugh; she’s sort of a rock chick Supreme.’ There’s no doubt that she an abundance of warmth and humanity and humor and can just ricochet from genuine pain to complete Loony Tunes in one sentence; so she’s everything that we could ever have dreamed of in a Donna.”
Was she always an ABBA?
“To be honest I was really more of a Beatles freak, and like Catherine a bit of a punk, but I really underestimated, a lot of us have, how much of their material is downloaded into our subconscious. I had ABBA albums, but I wasn’t a fanatic, but I have since been humbled and I am really moved by the songs.”
The casting of an unknown to play Meryl’s daughter. How did that come about?
“After Meryl signed on, we knew we had to cast someone who you could believe was her daughter; if she in any way resembled any of the actors we had cast as her three potential fathers, it could give away the plot so we had to have someone with blond hair and blue eyes, someone who had the essence of Meryl. We met scores of people in New York and Los Angeles who had come from all over the States, and then our brilliant casting director Ellen Lewis introduced us to Amanda (Seyfried,) and we all fell in love with her, and when we heard her sing — she has the most magical natural voice — Bjorn and Benny (the composers) immediately wanted to record one of their songs with her. She’s been an actress since she was fifteen. She has this natural earthy quality, you completely believe she’s Meryl’s child. And off screen and on they have a real bond which is very moving.”
Having directed the stage show in London, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Sydney, where she tweaked each production, has she been able to find he right mix for the movie?
“From the start when we went from London to Toronto I said we can’t just make a kind of cookie cutter show. However much we were trying to protect the original, we wanted the audience in Toronto to feel it’s a Canadian show, and when we went to Australia it was an Australian show, and there we changed some of the jokes. So for film we’ve tried to incorporate all that, the new things, the new spirits, and all that has informed the movie.”
The film boasts a woman producer, writer, and director. What does that say?
“All I know is when Benny and Bjorn were asked how they felt about having a woman director, they were very positive, not because they thought it necessary for the story but because they felt we three were good at collaborating. And to get the best out of actors you have to be able to collaborate with them. Women I think are quite good at listening. It’s not easy on a set where the tradition, I am told, is ‘You’re the admiral now, and get up on the front of the ship, and kick arse.”
Was it essential that all three actors (Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, and Stellan Skarsgard) had to have good singing voices?
“None of them are professional singers yet they have fantastic voices. Colin used to have a rock band; so he’s very musical. He’s put his headbanger days behind him and become the archetypal English romantic hero so perfect for the role because Harry is this buttoned up Englishman, who once he gets to this magic island, bits of his clothing begin to come off, bits of his past begins to erupt until by the second half of the movie he’s pogo-ing on the dance floor like the headbanger he once was. Stellan is the Indiana Jones of the three fathers, the kind of Wild Man of Borneo who is always on the move, no commitments, no ties. Stellan has that complete passionate abandon. He’s the one who’s going to get them all to jump off the rocks into the sea. And Pierce has the romantic wry humor, and he’s got an incredible voice which Benny and Bjorn call a cross between Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen. And when he sings the number, When All Is Said and Done, which isn’t in the stage show, it’s just so full of soul. They all bring the question of identity to life on screen.”
Is Stellan really singing?
“His character doesn’t have as much to sing as the other two, but he sings in the number Taking a Chance on Me, and he has a small moment in Voulez Vous, when he sings with Julie Walters.”
Were there a lot of preproduction rehearsals?
“We were lucky, because it’s a musical, we had some rehearsal time, but I was pushy about getting rehearsal time not just for the musical side but for the other scenes as well because Meryl is so free. So we did a lot of improvisation and added that to the text; they’ve all been very inventive.”
Was that also true with the dance numbers?
“In fact weeks before we started shooting I did several months of workshops with current and ex-Mamma Mia cast members. I went in with a handy cam video recorder and workshopped ideas just to explode us out of the stage work, which I had done with Anthony van Laast who is also the choreographer on the film. So that was quite crucial in our leaving the stage behind us.”
For the record, Playtone’s previous success was the worldwide blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
This one should be an equally big fat Greek wedding.
PHYLLIDA LLOYD (Director) has directed opera, theatre and recently her first film for television. Theatre includes Six Degrees of Separation, Hysteria, Wild East (Royal Court), The Threepenny Opera, Boston Marriage (Donmar Warehouse), Mary Stuart (Donmar Warehouse and Apollo), The Way of the World, Pericles, What the Butler Saw, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Duchess of Malfi (Royal National Theatre), Artists and Admirers, The Virtuoso (Royal Shakespeare Company), Mamma Mia! (London, Broadway and worldwide), The Taming of the Shrew (Globe). Opera: La Bohème, Medea, Carmen, L’Etoile, Gloriana, Albert Herring (Opera North), Macbeth (Paris), The Handmaid’s Tale (Copenhagen, ENO and Toronto), The Carmelites, The Verdi Requiem and Wagner’s Ring Cycle (English National Opera). For Gloriana a Film, she received an International Emmy, an FIPA d’Or and the Royal Philharmonic Society Award. In 2007, Peter Grimes was nominated for the Best New Opera Production Olivier Award and won South Bank Opera and Royal Philharmonic Society awards.