Amanda Seyfried loved feeling like "a theatre actor" while making her upcoming movie musical Octet.
In the film adaptation of the 2019 Off-Broadway musical, the Mean Girls actress stars alongside musical theatre performers Rachel Zegler, Jonathan Groff, Gaten Matarazzo, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Tramell Tillman, among others.
Octet, directed by Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda, follows eight internet-obsessed people who meet in a church basement, lock their phones in a box, and struggle with digital dependency using only their voices.
While it is a film, Seyfried felt like a theatre actor rehearsing for a stage production.
"The best thing about this project, for me, is the entire rehearsal process. First of all, we have a rehearsal process, and the entire rehearsal process is being done as if it was theatre," she told British GQ. "So we're doing eight hours (of rehearsals daily) and then we have a week of tech, and then the film crew comes in and we shoot."
The Oscar-nominated actress added that she doesn't care about the film's reception because she had so much fun being a theatre actor for two months.
"I don't know what it's going to be, who's going to see it, when it's going to come out - I don't give a f**k," she declared. "What I care about is making the most of this delicious two-month period where I'm going to be a theatre actor and I'm going to be singing in unison a cappella, with seven other unbelievable artists, in a room with Lin."
While Seyfried is well-known for singing in films like Mamma Mia!, Les Misérables and The Testament of Ann Lee, she has never transferred those skills to a stage musical.
She explained to Vanity Fair last year that she considered doing a Broadway musical but ultimately decided she couldn't "put (herself) through that".
"I think my plan was to do a musical on Broadway, and then I made the decision to never put myself through that - because to be honest, my stage fright is like, life's too short," she stated.
Seyfried once appeared on stage Off-Broadway in the 2015 play The Way We Get By alongside her now-husband Thomas Sadoski.
