Telluride: Angelina Jolie and Pablo Larraín on Reactions to ‘Maria,’ Singing Opera and Celebrity

On Sunday, less than 24 hours after the Telluride Film Festival’s North American premiere of Maria, a drama about the rollercoaster life of the legendary opera singer Maria Callas, The Hollywood Reporter sat down with its star, Angelina Jolie, and director, Pablo Larraín, for a wide-ranging conversation.

Jolie said of playing Callas, in a performance for which she is generating white-hot best actress Oscar buzz, “It certainly was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Why? On the most literal level, the Girl, Interrupted Oscar winner had to learn how to sing opera and then do so in front of others live and on camera (her voice was ultimately blended with Callas’s in the final product). But beyond that, she clearly feels a personal bond with “La Divina,” who died in 1977, the age of 53, when Jolie was just two.

Both, Jolie acknowledged, could be described as world-famous performers — “icons,” as Larraín puts it — to whom the public and critics weren’t always kind, and whose relationships were often dissected by strangers, which took a major toll on them. But, she emphasized, “Where we really connect is in our dedication to our work, our vulnerability, our loneliness and our love of communicating with an audience.” (Jolie also spoke with Rebecca Keegan for this week’s THR cover story.)

A transcript of the converation, lightly edited for clarity and brevity, appears below.

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What have you made of your Telluride experience so far?

JOLIE It’s just such a wonder. There’s such a warmth among the people — even among the press!

We try.

JOLIE It’s such a relaxed environment for everybody to be in, and there’s so much time to see each other’s work and support each other’s projects. It’s as it should be: all about the work and less about presentation.

You guys came here directly from your world premiere in Venice…

LARRAÍN Yeah. It’s such a different rhythm over there. It’s so intense. It’s super beautiful. It’s organized chaos. And then here, it’s so relaxed and people are really into the movies — everyone’s seeing two or three films a day, at least. It’s the only film festival where you can see movies when you have a movie in the festival. I’ve seen three films. It’s unusual.

JOLIE We saw Anora this morning.

And what have you made of the reactions here to your film?

LARRAÍN I like it, when people take the film in the way that we felt it and did it — that it’s not entirely rational, it’s more in an emotional space, which is what music is. Opera is something that is mostly an emotional experience. And I think Maria Callas did that, and took the emotional experience to a different level in the operatic world. The aim of this film is to try to do that somehow. I think people are connecting with that and it’s beautiful.

Angelina, do you take a peek at what people are writing?

JOLIE I never read reviews. Not the good or the bad. I actually have read the bad in the past when I’ve directed, because I’m curious about what is or isn’t landing.

They’ve been pretty good for this one…

JOLIE Yeah, I’ve heard through people I trust and love. And I’ll ask Pablo if there’s a concern or if there’s something misunderstood. But yeah, it [this film] is so new for me. We just put this out, and I’m so emotionally connected to it that it means a lot for people to be kind or open to it.

I suspect I know the answer to this, but why are you so emotionally connected to this film in particular? Is there more of you personally in it, or is it the amount of prep and work that went into it, or something else?

JOLIE I haven’t fully analyzed that myself. It certainly was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Anytime you’re playing a real person whose life has meant so much to people, you think of that individual and you carry that responsibility. On this one, I really felt that every step. When you walk inside someone else’s footsteps, you connect to them — and on this one in particular, which is about the last days of her life.

Pablo, some people refer to your last three movies — 2016’s Jackie, 2021’s Spencer and now Maria — as a trilogy. Do you?

LARRAÍN I never planned to make three movies. I was invited to do Jackie by Darren Aronofsky, and then we thought about doing Spencer, and then before that movie was over, we invited Angie to play Callas. So it’s like an accidental three movies that have some form of connection.

They’re all about 20^th century female icons. Maria and Jackie were both involved with Aristotle Onassis. Princess Diana was kind of haunted by Anne Boleyn, who Maria’s singing about. And they all died too young. Anything else?

LARRAÍN I guess they were all dealing with very strong relationships, and they have in common that they all were able to find their own place on earth by themselves, not related to a man, basically related to their real identity, I think. But yeah, there are connections because they basically shaped a big chunk of what we understand of the second-half of the last century.

Angelina, I don’t think you’ve sung before in films, and I don’t know if you had a particular interest in Maria Callas before this. Pablo, what made you think of Angelina for the part?

LARRAÍN It’s a little bit embarrassing to say this in front of her.

JOLIE Yeah, I kind of feel like you shouldn’t say it.

LARRAÍN But I’ll do it, of course. We met twice in previous years before we connected on this. When I thought about enormous mystery that Maria Callas had, I thought, “She [Jolie] can do that.” There’s a lot that you need to imagine and complete, and I think cinema is about what we as an audience can complete. And then the discipline — a movie like this requires a lot of discipline, not just to prepare for the role, but to hold it as you shoot it. Angelina is someone who was there to work; she is a worker, like everyone else in that set. And then, having someone that would be called “La Diva” by all the other characters who would have that sort of energy, that presence, and she obviously has that. This woman [Callas] is an icon, and we needed to have an icon play another icon. What makes an icon? If I would be able to explain it, then it would be a formula and people could just recreate it. It’s not possible. Sorry, Angelina, I had to say it.

JOLIE I’m embarrassed. [laughs]

This movie raises an interesting thing about celebrity. Callas was such a huge name in her time, but today, probably nine out of 10 people on the street wouldn’t know who she was.

LARRAÍN Especially in the US.

JOLIE In the U.S., yeah.

Angelina, she died when you were just two. What, if anything, did you know about her prior to this project coming along?

JOLIE I knew some of her music, I knew of her, but so much of this was a discovery for me. I hope what audiences find is that there was so much research done into what we believe she really was like — the human being behind the voice and behind the image. Maybe not “behind the voice,” because the voice is the woman. But I think even if I’d read biographies on her, I [wouldn’t have understood her] until I stepped in and kind of felt her. I hope more people discover her and opera and go to the opera and listen to opera. It’s really a transformative, unique art form — I think it does something to our souls that is essential.

Pablo, you grew up going to the opera?

LARRAÍN My parents would get a year pass. I was more interested than my brothers and sisters. I understood that opera is something that takes all of your attention. You can’t have opera playing in the background. It’s not like pop music or any other form of music. If you listen to opera, it’s the only thing you can do. And it’s something that can be transformative, can make you feel things that are impossible to explain. I grew up not really caring about the argument of the opera — I was not reading the subtitles because it would take my eyes off the stage and the singers. It’s an entirely emotional process, and I think that’s what we all did in this film. Everyone from Guy [Hendrix Dyas], our production designer, to Massimo [Cantini Parrini], our costume designer — everyone was just creating this operatic world that felt like, I don’t know, a construction of an opera stage inside of her own house, inside of her imagination.

Angelina, did having to sing give you pause about doing this film? I mean, even the greatest singer alive today would probably be intimidated about having to “do” Callas…

JOLIE Oh, it was daunting. At first, I really didn’t understand opera, so I was naive enough to think that I was just going to take singing classes and we would somehow do the magic of movies and make it through. Then it became very clear to me that you really can’t fake opera, and that I was going to actually have to learn how to sing. He [Pablo] knew this all along, of course, but this became more and more clear to me. But what a great privilege to have the support of a director like Pablo, who believes in you and supports a team around you to train you and teach you and grow your instrument and help you to do something you didn’t think you could ever do. So, though it was really frightening, I never didn’t think, “How fortunate am I?”

Pablo, can you explain the technicalities of how you blended Angelina’s voice with Callas’s voice?

LARRAÍN This is not pop music or rock. It’s not asking Angie to sing, I don’t know, David Bowie. Opera requires a pitch, so you need to be in the right pitch to find the color, the structure of the melody and the emotion that Callas sang with. First she [Jolie] learned how to stand, posture, breathing, then the accent of the words that she was singing, mostly in Italian — and then just sang it over and over again. On the set, she had an earpiece [playing the accompanying music] and she was singing out loud with no amplification, in front of the crew — sometimes there were 50 people, sometimes 200, sometimes 500. The only thing that we heard was Angie’s voice, nothing else, because everything else is through wires. [With regard to the mix blending Jolie’s and Callas’s voices], I’ll tell you who does it. It’s a guy called John Warhurst, who has been doing this for many years. He did it with Rami Malek [for Bohemian Rhapsody], and the Bob Marley movie [Bob Marley: One Love], and now he’s doing the Michael Jackson movie [Michael]. It’s really the only way to do it. He explained to me, and then I said, “You have to [explain it to Jolie].” So we had a Zoom call, and Angie was blinking fast on the other side— [laughs]

JOLIE As he was explaining. [laughs]

LARRAÍN If we capture her voice, then we not only have her voice, but we have the breathing, the emotion, and every sound she produces is there. So then, when we mix it, you have the elements. We don’t want to spoil it, but in the last rehearsal when she [Callas] is singing in the present, that’s mostly Angie. And then when we go to La Scala in ’59, and it’s Callas’ prime, but there’s a little bit of Angie. Sometimes it’s two percent, five percent or seven percent in the prime. In the present, it could be up to 50. And in some moments, it could be 80. But there’s always a balance, never forgetting that we’re making a movie about the greatest opera voice.

Angelina, you and Maria obviously are totally different people from totally different eras, but what are the ways, if any, that you found that you most relate to her? I mean, it seems to me that there are certain things about her that few people could understand more than you…

JOLIE Yes. I think it must be obvious to the audience, because I get asked this every time. It’s quite interesting. I almost want to ask it back, to hear what everybody else is thinking—

Well, I could throw out a few if you want.

JOLIE Oh, okay.

It’s up to you. Do you want to hear?

JOLIE Sure.

I mean, she was obviously one of the most well-known people in the world. People weren’t always particularly nice about her. Her personal relationships were discussed a lot, which is probably not a lot of fun. I don’t know, am I leaving anything out? Are those accurate?

JOLIE I think that is accurate and what people would see. I think the truth is where we really connect is in our dedication to our work, our vulnerability, our loneliness and our love of communicating with an audience.

Angelina, this is kind of one of these impossible questions, but would you rather have been a very famous person when she was one or now?

JOLIE I don’t know because I didn’t live at that time, so I can’t compare. I think we’re all curious about living at a different time.

The film suggests that Callas died with two people that really cared about her. Is that a happy thing to know or a sad thing to know? Both were on her payroll, but they seemed to really care a lot about her…

JOLIE I think those people did really care about her, and she wasn’t completely alone, and I’m very happy for that. I’m very grateful to them for that.

LARRAÍN And there were more than two people. The movie needs to reduce certain things. But those wonderful Italian actors, Pierfrancesco [Favino, who plays Callas’s butler] and Alba [Rohrwacher, who plays Callas’s maid], were extraordinary.

Maria is clearly haunted by the sound of her voice from the past, to the extent that she’s not even able to listen to recordings of it. Angelina, how do you do if, say, you’re watching TV and come across a film of yours from the past?

JOLIE I mean, there are quite a few of my films I’ve never seen, but she didn’t listen to her music for very different reasons, I think. I love the experience of creating; I don’t necessarily like the experience of watching my own work. I do love to know if an audience connected. It depends. Some things have come on from when I was young, and I’ll see my kids enjoy them, and I can remember a different time and the people I knew then — it’s like a family album sometimes when you see your old work. But I won’t watch it [all the way through]. Do you [Pablo]?

LARRAÍN Never. I never look back.

JOLIE Really?

LARRAÍN I don’t do that. No, I can’t.

JOLIE Have your children, though, asked to see any of your work? Because that’s how it happened to me.

LARRAÍN Well, most of my movies in Latin America are on Netflix, so they have seen some of them. But there’s one thing I’d like to say before you go, that I think is very important. Opera started in the 16th century. The aim was to connect the theater with popular music. It was really a folkloric event, and it was for the masses. And then over the years, because of the Germans, it became a more elitist type of artwork. And then Maria Callas sang most of what is known as bel canto, which is a tradition of composers, mostly Italian, and they were more popular. She followed the tradition that first was Caruso and then Maria and then Pavarotti and today, to some extent, is Andrea Bocelli: they were people that were trying to put opera back where it belongs, which is not in elitist, $500 seats kind of shows, but where people could just really enjoy and feel that music out there. Maria Callas did that. If this movie — thanks to Angelina, thanks to Callas, thanks to everyone who did this film, and obviously thanks to the composers that made that music — can make one person, five, ten, one million, or whatever it is, interested in opera, then I feel that we will have succeeded in a very beautiful way, because we’re trying to put opera where it belongs, back to the masses.