This note could start with a single sentence: with you the winner of the Oscar for Best Actress, Jessica Chastain and no other preamble would be necessary. Because Chastain, generational, award-winning actress, can be a federal agent, the owner of an underground gambling house, a vulnerable televangelist, a desperate Bergmanian woman, and it’s impossible not to believe her.
These are hectic days, in the same week he premiered “A Doll’s House” on Broadway and won the award Screen Actors Guild Award (SAG Award) for Best Miniseries Actress for “George & Tammy”, which is now available on Paramount+. There she plays the emblematic singer Tammy Wynette along with the great Michael Shannon as her husband, the famous artist George Jones. These country music stars who exploded in the ’70s spark each other with a story of love, abuse, art, pain, redemption and tragedy, a kind of “A Star Is Born” stolen from real life.
A reunion, love beyond marriage, how to give voice to those who don’t have it and Hollywood stereotypes in this talk with NEWS.
News: How did you approach a story with as many edges as that of “George & Tammy”?
Jessica Chastin: The more I read about them I realized that George and Tammy were conceived as a concept created by self-serving individuals, I mean the showbiz machine. They were two incredibly talented and sensitive human beings who were marketed, sold and manipulated by the industry. It was very important to me to convey that, to really get into the person that Tammy was, to honor her and find an honest connection with her.
News: Both you and Michael Shannon are well-known global actors. Now the cult of celebrities is quite different, how do you think Tammy lived it at the time of her?
Chastain: we as actors we have the benefit of playing different people, we are others for a while, but Tammy had to expose herself by being raw herself. You have to think about how they became the most popular stars in country music, it was a brutal event and exposure rarely seen. Most people were very skeptical of her partner, they were always faced with controversy and drama. It was necessary to show how Tammy navigated all that, because at that time the singers had to be perfect women and she made her life, she went with another guy, she was married several times… Today that is very normal, but at that time it was a scandal, a lot of focus was put on them and somehow paid for that.
News: He had the opportunity to speak with Georgette, the daughter of Tammy and George, author of the book on which the series is based. What did he feel when talking to her about her mother?
Chastain: Yes, we talked and I really got the idea that Tammy was a great mother and George was also a great father, despite everything that surrounded them both, they were very loved by their children. Look, I’m going to tell you something that broke my heart, she started working when she was very young cooking out of necessity, although it was something she didn’t like that much, but over time cooking for her became a form of love. At the end of her life when she was taking so much medication and only tolerated eating herself minimally, she would manage to go to the kitchen and prepare dinner for her family. Although she couldn’t taste what she had cooked for them there was something of maternal protection that came through those things. Everything I read about Tammy shows that she had a giant heart, she lived to care for others. (N of R: Tammy lived for years in pain as a result of an operation and she died at 55 under dubious circumstances, a product of the ravages caused by the abuse of medications)
News: George and Tammy were the first emblematic couple of country music, they are famous figures in the United States. The original material on which the series is based is “The Three of Us: Growing up with Tammy and George”, a best seller written by her daughter Georgette Jones. How much did that biography influence to outline your character in the series and what new aspects can we discover?
Chastain: In addition to the book that we have all read, I think the big difference in delineating our characters was made by the interviews that the team conducted to write the scripts. For example, they met not only with family or with their colleagues but also with close people who are not usually in the public eye like Tammy’s hairdresser. And it is not a small thing because the hair was a fundamental part of his image, they asked him all those secrets that are shared with your closest environment, those anecdotes that do not appear in the books. A lot of people in his circle revealed a lot of details and unsaid things that we didn’t know about. You have to watch the series to find out! (series).
News: Speaking of couples, you and Michael Shannon repeat a fictional marriage because you were already together in the movie “Take Shelter” (2011). How was this second round?
Chastain: Oh, Take Shelter! (smiles fondly). This second round was great and also very different. Because in “Take Shelter” we met the day before we started filming, we hadn’t crossed paths at all, I was just starting out and trying to figure out how this profession really worked. Almost 12 years later we can say that we built a friendship, we see each other, we talk about our projects. So when we started this series we were standing in such a different place. We felt at home, very comfortable because we work in a similar way…
News: And how is that feeling of intimacy reflected on the screen?
Chastain: It’s just that without that chemistry there’s nothing. In addition, the truth is that we loved the scripts, we have a lot in common and that already leads you to start from a place of connection. It seems to me that this is the only way to be able to tell a story like this, because you need to trust your fellow traveler, it was an absolute partnership, a communion. Otherwise I could not have embarked on a project like this because I am not a singer nor am I dedicated to music, from the first moment I depended on my partner. I tell you more, even when I was in the recording studio singing alone I can’t explain how much it helped me to know that Michael was hanging around, listening to what he was doing. I felt very aligned, connected and I think that shows.
News: I thought that it must not be easy to portray a great passion, but also a couple with so many difficulties. Are there loves that transcend marriage?
Chastain: I think so, definitely. The fact that they decided to reissue those love songs that they made together, with which they went on endless tours, was to rescue a feeling that transcends everything, I’m excited to listen to those songs after so many things that happened in between, it’s beautiful. Somehow he was her and she was him. I think the most interesting thing about that love happened after their marriage ended.
News: You played two exceptional Tammys. She first played Tammy Faye in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” for which she won the Best Actress Oscar in 2022 and just picked up the SAG for Best Actress in a Miniseries for playing Tammy Wynette. Are we women finally telling our own stories?
Chastain: I think that the more women are in the entertainment industry the more stories of ours will be told. We need more women in decision-making positions, in executive positions, plus directors, producers and screenwriters. When I started this I only received stories about women written by men and said “Just send me one of a man written by a woman, let’s see if they can find it!” (laughs). The truth is that I was so tired of receiving scripts where the roles were that of the wife, of the woman that she prevented her husband from succeeding by saying “we need you at home with the family”… Ugh, they already had me fed up with that. Five years later I started getting into darker characters because I wanted to escape those stereotypes. and the roles so flat that they offered us actresses. I feel like there are finally more roles available now, some like these amazing characters you mentioned. Many times you find them in European productions because I feel that the female characters are much better written there than in the United States. They are heroines who make mistakes, who…are human. And those are the women I like to see.
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