The director of new A24 film Mother Mary has said that Anne Hathaway’s lead character was heavily influenced by Taylor Swift.
The thriller, released April 24 in the UK, stars Hathaway alongside Michaela Coel. The official synopsis reads: “The film follows the psychosexual affair between pop singer Mary (Hathaway) and fashion designer Sam (Coel) after the former’s need for a dress for her new tour draws them back together.”
In a new interview with Empire, director David Lowery (The Green Knight) discussed how Swift’s live shows informed the music performances in the film. “Her ‘Reputation’ concert film is one of the best concert films ever,” Lowery said. “It’s truly phenomenal. And for our concert sequences we looked at that repeatedly. You would not believe the amount of time we were talking about Taylor.”
The concert also helped with budgeting concerns. “We took three songs from ‘Reputation’ and broke it down, shot by shot, and looked at them like, ‘Okay, if we were doing these, how much would these shots cost to do in visual effects?’,” he explained. “We used that as a budgeting tool, because we didn’t know how to wrap our heads around actually pulling off a stadium concert-show on a minimal budget. We were literally using ‘Reputation’ as a guide.”
He concluded that Hathaway’s character, Mary, had some echoes of the star. “I definitely brought a lot of Taylor Swift to the table in terms of who Mother Mary was,” he said. “I would often would be like, ‘Imagine Taylor Swift in 10 or 15 years – that’s sort of who this character could be.’”
Hathaway also performed new songs written by Charli XCX for the movie, which also features original material from Jack Antonoff. Her performance of the track ‘Burial’ was released last month, and can be heard here.