Anne Hathaway spoke to Charli XCX in preparation for Mother Mary.
The 43-year-old actress plays the titular character in the new psychological drama-thriller, which follows the psychosexual affair between pop singer Mary and fashion designer Sam, and Anne has revealed that she reached out to Charli in preparation for her role.
The Hollywood actress - who stars alongside Michaela Coel, Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, and FKA Twigs in the movie - told People: "The person that I spoke to was Charli ... I wanted to talk to her about the music, she wrote such amazing music that I was going to perform. But I also just had a lot of questions for her about what her life was like, what the experience of being a pop star was."
Anne's respect for pop stars, and other people in the music business more broadly, increased during the film's shoot.
She said: "I just realised about pop stars is they're endurance athletes who can do it all in platform heels. They are the most charming people on the planet and they have this crazy self-belief, like they're so driven to share what's inside of them."
Mother Mary is directed by David Lowery, and he recently revealed that Taylor Swift's Reputation concert film played a huge part in inspiring some of the scenes.
He told Empire magazine: "Her Reputation concert film is one of the best concert films ever. 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 moviemaker added: "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?'
"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. I can go on about Reputation all day."
The director attended one of Taylor's concerts with Anne and the actress even gifted him a friendship bracelet inspired by the singer.
He said: "When we wrapped, Annie gave me a Taylor Swift style beaded bracelet with ‘Anti-Hero’ on it. I definitely brought a lot of Taylor Swift to the table in terms of who Mother Mary was.
"I would often would be like: 'Imagine Taylor Swift in 10 or 15 years,' that’s sort of who this character could be."
