FEATURE:
Take Two
IN THIS PHOTO: Rachel Zegler/PHOTO CREDIT: Diego Bendezu for Allure
Imagining a Musical Life for Beloved Actors
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THERE are plenty of examples…
IN THIS PHOTO: Jessie Buckley/PHOTO CREDIT: Nathaniel Goldberg for ELLE
of artists stepping into acting. Straddling those worlds. Charli xcx has a mockumentary coming out. Lady Gaga is an acclaimed artist. This has been the case for decades. Maybe seen as quite a natural move, I have written about artist appearing in films and on T.V. Although some are a little elitist when it comes to artists and preferring them to stay in their lane, most people embrace them. However, what about the other way around? Perhaps it seems less natural that actors would go into a music career. I will apply this to men but, for this feature, I have been thinking about a few women who are truly tremendous actors you would love to see embark on music careers. I have written about her before, and she will probably tire of it, but the national treasure that is Florence Pugh has a wonderful voice. This is not me manifesting these opportunities and trying to get these incredible women into music. Rather, it is recognising the talent they have and why perhaps there is a bit more reluctance for actors to jump into music compared to artists going into acting. It is great that actors like Kate Hudson have music careers. Whether they have been going for a while or are just releasing music, it is fascinating. You can say Will Smith and Jennifer Lopez were actors before they became artists. Keano Reeves, Zooey Deschanel and Donald Glover have enjoyed music careers or varying success and notoriety. To me, I think actors step into music because they love it and not because of ego or using their fame to sell records. It is their first love but, for some reason or the other, they went into acting. With Florence Pugh, this is someone who I think has suggested an album. Something she was considering. One of the prolific and in-demand artists, I do hope that we hear music from her this year. In the few occasions where we have seen her sing on screen, she has been transfixing. Early SoundCloud recordings and cover versions displayed this early talent. I would love a Florence Pugh album of originals, as I don’t think there is anyone in the mainstream quite like her. As a versatile actor, she would not be confined by genre. She is masterful at accents, so she could be this artist that can shift between sounds but be completely herself.
I am holding out hope that we get some music offering from Pugh soon. Maybe she has other priorities at the moment. Building her acting career. Maybe starting a family at some point. However, it is clear that music is a huge love for her, and she clearly has a natural talent. Maybe there are some who turn their noses at famous actors releasing music. Like it is a hobby. However, why should their incredible voices and this passioned by confined to the screen or their own homes?! If an artist wants to act then they have the opportunity and lots do it. I have watched a bit of The Night Manager. The BBC series features in its cast the incredible Camila Morrone. The Los Angeles-born actor and model appeared in the 2023 series, Daisy Jones & The Six. It featured incredible performances. Singing from the amazing Riley Keogh. Another cast member is artist Suki Waterhouse. Someone I have covered before. The series is based on the titular Rock band in 1970s Los Angeles. Perhaps a touch of Fleetwood Mac to them. Rather than this being an acting job for Camila Morrone, you feel like this was a real passion. Someone who has expressed an interest in a career in music, she also has a fantastic voice. It would be amazing to hear her record an album. Again, many might see this as another actor trying to go into music. Instead, it is trying to uncover a potentially brilliant artist. Looking around at modern music, like Florence Pugh, you know that Camila Morrone would offer something different. There are these disciplines and skills actors acquire that translates into music. When it comes to performances and delivery. How they write and how they approach songs. I loved seeing Morrone in Daisy Jones & The Six, and I feel that all of the cast could have a successful music career. Suki Waterhouse has. Riley Keogh has performed songs before but not recorded an album. She is the granddaughter of Elvis Presley, so it would be so phenomenal hearing music from her. Such a wonderful cast from that short-lived series, I have been thinking about what Camila Morrone could give to the music world. Maybe this is not on her mind at the moment, though I do feel like she would be an incredible songwriter and singer. Far beyond the samey Pop that dominates a lot of current conservation.
PHOTO CREDIT: Carin Backoff for Interview Magazine
Before moving on, there is a 2023 interview with Glamour, where Camila Morrone talked about her character in Daisy Jones & the Six, Camila Dunne, the wife of the titular band’s frontman, Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin). As someone who builds a career as a photographer and is not just someone who dates a Rock star, it sort of reminds me of Paul and Linda McCartney in a sense. Linda as this amazing photographer but also a great singer and artist. Camila Morrone also expressed a hope of releasing music one day – never saying never:
“What was your relationship like with Riley? On the show, as Daisy, she’s your fellow creative but also maybe coming for your man.
Well, the problem with Riley is that she’s the cutest, sweetest person on earth. It’s kind of hard to hate her. She brought that element to Daisy too, because no matter what Daisy does in the series, she’s always lovable in her own tortured and broken artist kind of way. There’s not really any crazy scenes between Camila and Daisy, which I like, because what I liked about the writing was they didn’t pit these two women against each other. It wasn’t based in jealousy or rivalry or competition.
There was this underlying respect between Daisy and Camila that makes it all just even more painful, because these women love each other in a weird way. They both admire certain qualities that the other person has that they don’t contain. I think for Camila, watching Daisy be this incredible artist who’s sensual and passionate and talented and wild is an attribute that she doesn’t feel she can bring to Billy’s life.
And I think for Daisy, Camila’s got this grounded centeredness, put togetherness, motherhood…kind of everything that Daisy doesn’t have. It’s very interesting. They both were polar opposites but had this common theme of loving this man and respecting each other through it as much as they could.
How do you feel about the time period?
I had a very rudimentary understanding of the style and a basic textbook understanding of what was going on in the world. When I got the job, I dove deeper into the politics of the time to understand the world they were living in. But I’m also so familiar with the LA kind of hippie scene. I mean, I’ve lived around Laurel Canyon and am so familiar with these spots. So I think for me, the homework and history came from getting to know the music of that era.
I know that you’ve dabbled in guitar. Are you a musician yourself?
I definitely wouldn’t call myself a musician, but in the pandemic, I set a goal of learning one new thing and that happened to be guitar. I was looking at videos yesterday, and I was actually kind of getting good. I stopped in the last year because I was filming so much.
Now I’m sad that I've given it up, because there was a moment when I was definitely flowing with it. I love music. It’s a really big part of my life. I like anything in the arts, anything that’s creative. So I never say no to anything. I would totally be open to doing something in music one day.
What are you listening to right now?
I really love Rosalía. I just went to see her show in London. She’s so incredible. She’s got this flamenco…she incorporates tango. I’m Argentinian, and all her songs are in Spanish. So I’ve been having a really good time listening to her album”.
This is not a slight on male actors. However, I am thinking about some of the queens of the acting world and those who love music but have not had the same crossover as those like Jennifer Lopez or Lady Gaga. Emilia Clarke is someone whose acting I adore. One of the best actors in the world. Like Florence Pugh, another British treasure. I did post it on social media a while ago. How Emilia Clarke has sung on screen and there are recordings. She is this wonderful singer! Again, I feel she could just have this incredible music career. In 2020, for the My Life in a Mixtape for the BBC, Emilia Clarke talked about her favourite music and songs/albums important to her:
“An album that reminds me of my dad:
The Beatles - 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'
The Beatles are Emilia's one musical "true love" and their masterpiece of an eighth LP was "the most important album" to her growing up.
She explains: "It was the one that I found first in my dad’s collection and the one that me and my brother would listen to the most. The cover was so beautiful and had that pull-out [sleeve]. I learnt all the words to all the songs."
These days, it's a record that reminds Emilia of her late father, who sadly passed away four years ago. "I’ve listened to this a lot for him," she says, "but also to relive all of those beautiful memories."
The song I know all the words to:
Coolio - 'Gangsta’s Paradise'
"You might not be expecting this next one," Emilia warns before playing Coolio's Grammy-winning 1995 rap hit, adding that the song was the second song she remembers discovering as a kid.
While she can't quite recall who introduced her to the song ("My brother tells me that it was his CD, but my dad had a really amazing record collection"), she doe have vivid memories of learning the lyrics secretly in private "because I didn’t want my mum to shout at me, as I think there are a few rude words".
"I thought I was the only person who knew all the words to this song, and then realised that everyone knows all the words to this song," Emilia adds. "It was my introduction to rap and hip-hop and the music that I adore completely."
The song that reminds me of friends:
Kings of Leon - 'The Bucket'
Kings Of Leon's first records will always remind Emilia of her three years spent at drama school, she says. And there's no other music that brings her back so quickly to the place that she first heard it.
The Nashville band remain "a band I love so much" and was the first time she "discovered music that wasn’t encouraged by my brother".
Their song 'The Bucket' especially was the soundtrack for "the birth of some of my most treasured friendships", a time that also saw Emilia get really into the likes of LCD Soundsystem (“I had never heard anything like it”).
My newest music discovery:
Little Simz - '101 FM'
Glastonbury Festival is a place, for Emilia, where she is at "peak happiness". She says wholeheartedly: "My happiest time in life is at Glastonbury."
Everyone has their own stories of acts they've seen at the Worthy Farm fest that just stick with them and Emilia says that one big highlight for her came at last year's event, when she was surrounded by "all my dearest friends" while watching London rapper Little Simz.
"We had discovered her album prior to going to Glastonbury, saw that she was going to be there and it became the gig that we focused our whole [festival] experience around," Emilia says. "She did not disappoint. She’s the coolest girl I’ve ever seen."
An all-time favourite:
Bob Dylan - 'Don't Think Twice'
After an eclectic mixtape, Emilia wanted to end things with one of her all-time ultimate songs and artists. "This is an incredibly important song for me. It’s my past, my present, my future - the whole shebang," she said.
Liking Bob Dylan to olives ("When I was a kid, I didn’t like olives and now they’re my favourite food. But it took me a while to get there"), Emilia recalled how her father and brother loved the folk icon when she was younger but that she simply "didn't get it".
Things eventually clicked though, Emilia says. "The beauty of Bob Dylan is that when you do discover him, you don’t want to listen to anyone else. I’ve learnt in my later years that if you have any questions, if there’s anything you’re worried about, if you’re unsure as to where you’re going in life, you just need to ask Bob and he will come up with a very good answer. This is the one [song] that wins every time”.
This is someone who does have a remarkable voice and I genuinely feel would be this awesome and unique artist. Another very busy and desired actor who has a packed diary, could the supreme Emilla Clarke gift us with an album at some point?! She is right up there with those who I would really love to see release music.
There are two more actors to spotlight. Someone whose musical talents have been music more on show during her time performing Evita in London, Rachel Zegler is primarily known as an actor, even though she has recorded. Rather than defining her as someone who is operatic and theatrical, she has this much broader on-screen musical experience. I am going to bring in a 2023 interview from Variety, where Zegler discussed singing live on-set for Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and why that was important. She also appeared in West Side Story in 2021. Steven Spielberg’s version. It is clear that she has an incredible talent that I think could be adapted into an album. I shall discuss that a bit in a second:
“Regarding the power of live on-set performance, Zegler states that it simply “adds something audiences miss when it’s gone. Singing in a film and singing live onstage are two different types of performances, sure, but you should be able to demonstrate both in your art when you’re working in the world of both musicals and film. Singing live for every take five days a week is not easy. But it brings something alive to the world of a film.”
Pointing to the force of capturing “The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird” on set, Zegler wanted badly to have its live element last all throughout the movie. “Dave’s music is like another character, filling in the gaps where dialogue does not do Lucy Gray justice,” she says. “And there’s a rawness to the music that truly fits in District 12— solace in the midst of the pain and suffering in a post-war society. Singing live added layers to a performance that canned vocals cannot.
“I was so moved singing ‘The Old Therebefore’, which is Lucy Gray’s last-ditch effort to survive snakes in the arena,” Zegler continues. “I had to pretend that where these venomous, neon-colored snakes were climbing up my dress while singing Suzanne’s beautiful words, and staring straight down the barrel of the lens. I had never felt so powerful or sure of myself on a set before. And that’s partly due to Francis being one of the best directors in the game, but also because I was able to bring a craft I have been training for half my life. That’s what it truly means to show up to work”.
Rachel Zegler does appear on Spotify, but on albums from films and theatre Whether as part of Evita, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes or singing Waiting on a Wish from Disney’s Snow White last year, maybe people would pigeonhole her. Her performances more theatrical and musical rather than anything that might naturally slot into the modern music mainstream. All the actors I have covered so far might be easily defined and labelled, though they could easily sing in any genre or in any way. The point is that they all love music and have this talent for performance and singing. If their songwriting potential is less visible or explored, I feel this would be something people would be fascinated to see realised. I really love Rachel Zegler and she is this stunning actor. I feel she could have this concurrent music career. Perhaps this is something in the pipeline or being recorded at the moment. A debut studio album from the U.S. actor. Such a wonderful vocalist, could this be brought into the studio for original recordings? I feel it would be less exciting having these actors sing covers and approach music that way. However, a mix of covers and originals would be intriguing. I also said previously how Hannah Waddingham would also record a wonderful album. Like Zegler, she might be seen as someone more suited to Opera, show tunes or the theatre. That it might be a niche music career or she would not slot alongside what is in the mainstream. She did release Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas in 2023. It is a magnificent and magical album. She is another actor that would have a great career in music. Waddingham might not have that desire to be an artist or do that. However, considering what a stunning singer she is and how every time she has sung people’s jaws have dropped, it would seem like such a waste if that 2023 Christmas album was her sole offering. I do conceive her writing personal and revealing songs that could work their way intro an album. Maybe something sultry, smoky or Jazz-influenced, I am thinking of classic Jazz and Blues singers with a bit of Amy Winehouse in there. However, Hannah Waddingham is another busy actor and this might be at the back of her mind.
Finally, here is an award-winning actor who just picked up a Golden Globe for her role in Hamnet. Jessie Buckley has a music career. She was in the 2018 film, Wild Rose. She plays Rose-Lynn Harlan, an aspiring Country singer. A single mother from Glasgow, it is her path and quest at becoming a professional artist. In the film, we see Rose-Lynn perform original song at Celtic Connections titled Glasgow (No Place Like Home), receiving raucous applause. In 2022, she recorded an album with Bernard Butler that was nominated for a Mercury Prize. For All Our Days That Tear the Heart is a phenomenal album that is not this case of an actor doing an album to show she can. It is someone who is as natural an artist as actor. That was four years ago. I do feel like Jessie Buckley has another album in her. Whether another collaboration or a solo, I want to end with a 2022 interview from The Guardian. Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler talking about their musical unity and working together:
“Two years ago they were strangers, paired together by Buckley’s manager who sensed they were kindred spirits. They barely knew each other’s work: Buckley had loved the Butler-produced album Old Wow by the folk singer Sam Lee, Butler had loved Buckley’s mesmerising performance, on an American chatshow, of the song Glasgow from Wild Rose, Buckley’s Bafta-nominated starring role as a Glaswegian ex-con country singer with fierce dreams of Nashville glory.
Since then, she has been a galactically soaring star, an unconventional presence in often-disturbing dramas: traumatised wife in Chernobyl, confused student in I’m Thinking of Ending Things, murderous nurse in Fargo. In 2021, she thrilled as Sally Bowles in the London West End revival of Cabaret (alongside Eddie Redmayne as Emcee, the pair winning best actor and actress at Sunday’s Olivier awards), and a sexually charged Juliet in Sky Arts’ Romeo and Juliet alongside good pal Josh O’Connor. The Lost Daughter then brought this year’s Oscar nod, with Buckley stunningly authentic as a suffocated and sensual young mother, playing the younger version of Olivia Colman’s character.
The spotlight threatens to eclipse even as luminous a collaboration as Buckley and Butler’s, and when we are finally alone, we are off to a shaky start. Earlier, among her colleagues, Buckley had openly discussed this year’s Will Smith Oscars incident (consensus: a sad night for all concerned) but now, on the record, she won’t go there. “I don’t want to give it any more weight,” she says, warmly but firmly, loth to create music-obliterating headlines: “It’s sensationalist.”
She had a great night anyway in her pink satin frock, predominantly spent “in the bar”; she was so star-struck when Colman introduced her to Bill Murray, “who I love”, that she couldn’t speak. “I totally bottled it!” She would prefer an Oscars night where “we could all just wear tracksuits, have pizza and beer, that would be a great party”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Jessie Buckley and Bernard Butler/PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Vermandel
Sitting alongside her, sliding ever-downwards, Butler’s silent demeanour is set to thunderingly bored, tolerating what he clearly thinks is irrelevant showbiz nonsense. I invite him in, and ask if he’s ever worked with an Oscar nominee before. This isn’t the right question either. “I don’t usually ask,” he scoffs. I wonder if he finds the multi-talents of his latest, exceptionally gifted collaborator, verging on the outrageous? This jovial notion is, it seems, even worse.
“Honestly?” he considers. “We meet, we write songs, we judge each other on what we can create, in the purest way. We don’t sit writing lists of talents and ticking them off thinking: great, I think we’re there now, shall we write a song? We never talk about any of this stuff. We just didn’t. Don’t.” Jessie: “And it’s great!”
I wonder if they, too, think no one sings like Buckley does any more. They are both bewildered. “I have no idea,” says Buckley, while Butler says: “We just didn’t discuss it: again, it’s about the magic in the moment. I’m not thinking: is Jessie’s voice up to the standard of Ella Fitzgerald?”
To my ears, For All Our Days That Tear the Heart might be the most affecting musical collaboration of Butler’s life, sumptuously orchestral but so intimate you can hear the very fingerprints on acoustic guitar. This brooding soundscape is both haunting and joyous, from its opening echoes of Joni Mitchell on The Eagle and the Dove, to the rousing male choir in Footnotes on the Map, to the closing, delicately yearning Catch the Dust. Buckley’s lyrics tell human stories through visions of birds, beasts and water, stories of loneliness, regret and resolution, of skins shed, buttons undone and the madness of being alive.
Their connection was instantaneous. Buckley, from Killarney, south-west Ireland, the eldest of five in a boisterous and creative household (dad a part-time poet, mum a vocal coach/harpist), had no idea that Butler’s parents are Irish, from Dún Laoghaire. Inspiration ignited not only through music (notes swapped on Nina Simone, Beth Gibbons, Talk Talk, Patti Smith, Gram Parsons, Pentangle), but painting, poetry, flamenco dancing, caravan holidays in Ireland and one book in particular, Maurice O’Sullivan’s 1933 memoir 20 Years A-Growing, an ode to remote living on the Blasket islands, off the coast of County Kerry, a favourite book of Butler’s for 15 years and the all-time favourite of Buckley’s gran.
Buckley had rarely worked like they did, creating something new from nothing – the Wild Rose soundtrack mostly featured covers, and her interpretations of musical theatre numbers go back way beyond Cabaret to her 2008 breakthrough on Andrew Lloyd Webber-helmed talent show I’d Do Anything. “I was scared, it was raw, exposing,” she says of her start with Butler. “I was sitting on a man’s floor who I’d never met. I never thought we’d even make a song, let alone an album.”
“You ask for an awful lot of trust,” adds Butler, of his lifelong collaborative process. “I’m afraid, too. If [there’s] not fear, then you’re just jogging, aren’t you?”
It’s a wonder Buckley had the time to make music at all (she is, she laughs, a “do it all” person), also completing two intriguing films last year, back-to-back: Men, a high-concept horror movie populated by menacing male protagonists (all played by Rory Kinnear), and Women Talking (with Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw and Claire Foy), the story of a Mennonite colony bedevilled by sexual assault. Instead of being tormented for months by scenes of toxic masculinity, she says she saw opportunities to learn, and has been drawn throughout her working life to dark and even frightening stories.
“Well, there’s frightening things happening,” she notes, ruefully. “I’m a pretty joyful person but when I want to understand something more, I’m not afraid to go wherever it requires me to go. There’s so much hoodwinking going on around us that I want to know the belly of the beast. It’s in all of us.”
Butler was a sensitive young man who found much of the 90s toxically masculine: to him a boorish, boozy, druggy celebration of what he called earlier this year the “rock’n’roll caricature”. A prodigious guitarist, he joined the fledgling Suede, and frontman Brett Anderson, at 19 and stormed away at 24. After some bombastic, peaks-and-troughs solo releases he finally found his identity in his 30s as a creative foil, working as a producer, songwriter or guitarist with artists ranging from Duffy and Sophie Ellis-Bextor to the Libertines and the Cribs.
“I had a very heightened experience when I was young,” he says. “People always said, ‘You’re too sensitive’ and I was, ‘Sorry, no I’m not’. Now I say, ‘Yeah, I’m fucking sensitive, yeah I’ve got senses!’ I feel them, express them and I wouldn’t be doing this for 30 years if people weren’t picking up on them. I’m happy that element is respected more now. I teach young people as well and that’s one thing I look out for, introversion and sensitivity, and really protect people who have that. Because I … wasn’t [protected]. But fuck it. I did all right. I’m incredibly lucky. To be here right now with Jessie, doing this. And anyone from that generation, who stamped down that expression and is now not getting that, more fool them. I win”.
These are just a few incredible actors who could offer something phenomenal to music. Each has experience of recording music, though each could record wonderful albums. Whether Jessie Buckley, Hannah Waddingham, Rachel Zegler, Camilla Morrone, Emilla Clarke and Florence Pugh have plans or not, it will be wonderful to see. I do think that these wonderful actors, who have added so much brilliance to the screen, could take that into the studio. There are no firm plans from any of them, though who knows what could come from them…
LATER in the year.