Lily James on preparing for Mamma Mia: I went on steroids and didnt talk
I’ve sort of blanked out on the actual plot of Mamma Mia: There We Go Again, so it came as a surprise to me to realize, just at this very moment, that Lily James plays the young version of Meryl Streep’s character. I thought Lily was playing someone else entirely, but no. Lily covers the latest issue of Allure to promote the film and she shows more personality in this interview (plus an interview in People Mag, which I’m adding) than I’ve ever really seen from her. She comes across as a real person who thinks about real things, not just a ditzy posh girl whose life was handed to her on a silver platter. She also reveals something I didn’t even know was a thing: she loses her voice A LOT. Huh.
On being typecast as good girls: “I think every actor is typecast. You have to remind yourself, I can do this for a long, long time, and there’s so much time to reinvent yourself or move in a totally different direction. I’ve just had this feeling that I can’t get rid of recently — and sometimes what you think is right for you is total nonsense anyway — that I’ve wanted to step away from playing characters that feel quite honest and open. There’s a goodness to them that I want to get away from.”
She auditioned for the part on her way to Glastonbury with Matt Smith: “He pulled over and waited for me while I went in and sang a few Mamma Mia! songs and did a few scenes. Then I was like, ‘Peace, I’m out,’ and we went to the festival and had the best weekend. My agents rang me on the Monday or Tuesday, and I had completely lost my voice. They were like, ‘You’re going to be doing ABBA in a few weeks.’ I was like, ‘Oh, sh-t.’”
She’s “struggled” with her voice a lot since leaving drama school. “I lose my voice a lot. I have issues — it’s really scary and heartbreaking.”
Preparing for the singing in Mamma Mia: “I didn’t speak for a week before we recorded… I went on steroids and didn’t talk. I watched Mamma Mia over and over again to channel the essence of what makes Donna so unique and brilliant and fearless and courageous.”
She cried the first time she met Meryl Streep: “She was singing this song, and it’s a beautiful song, and it made me cry,” she remembers, and she was also thinking, “You’ve got to hold it together because she’s coming over. I just hugged her and said hi. She’s such a cool woman.”
She will do inclusion riders from here on out: “I don’t know if people will laugh at me if I say I need to have it, because I guess you have to have a certain amount of status to actually enforce those things. But actually, I think whatever point you’re at it’s something you can say, and we’ve all got that power. It’s certainly stuff I’ve talked to my agents about.”
I’ve heard actors talk about how their voice is one of their most important “instruments” as an actor, and that they must be aware of it and take care of it. It sounds like Lily is sort of predisposed to lose her voice, which I didn’t know was a real thing, and add to that… she maybe doesn’t take care of her voice as well as she should? She’s too busy scream-singing for days at music festivals. I was like, “wow, it’s pretty hardcore to take steroids for a role” but I bet she means corticosteroids to treat an inflammation of her vocal cords. Or something, I’m not a doctor. But I do think it’s weird that she keeps losing her voice.
Cover courtesy of Allure, additional photos courtesy of WENN.
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