The Holidays Are Twice as Nice With Double the Amanda Seyfried |
Amanda Seyfried loves musicals. Since starring in Mamma Mia!, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, and Les Misérables, she’s been keeping an eye out for another to take on.
But The Testament of Ann Lee is worlds away from Seyfried’s other musicals. Directed by Mona Fastvold, the ambitious film stars Seyfried as the founder of the Shakers, who faced incredible personal challenges as she fought to establish her religious movement. The music and dance numbers, based on Shaker hymns, are ecstatic, intense, and demanded a lot from Seyfried. And she delivers, despite the challenging process. “It feels really incredibly exhausting and annoying because my brain doesn’t collect data fast enough or doesn’t remember data fast enough—it’s frustrating,” she tells Little Gold Men of learning the film’s choreography. “However, the end result and the reason behind it all was so important. There’s a rigidity to certain Shaker movements, and there’s also a freedom and an openness. I’ve never moved like that.”
|
The week before Ann Lee comes out on Christmas, she stars in The Housemaid, a wild ride of a psychological thriller in which Seyfried plays a wealthy woman who hires a new live-in housemaid (Sydney Sweeney) with a troubled past. Seyfried has a lot of fun in the role as the story’s twists and turns unfold—and it’s a truly entertaining theatrical experience. “It was the only movie that I’ve seen that shocked me as I was watching it,” she says.
That’s the thing about Seyfried—she’s full of surprises. She can play an 18th-century religious leader pulsating with movement and spiritual fervor, or she can play an unreadable housewife whose motives are hidden deep within. But as she tells Little Gold Men, she knows her limits—which include never performing a musical on Broadway. Read on to learn about her unusual passion: taxidermy. |
Subscribe to our Royal Watch newsletter and get an overview of the chatter from Kensington Palace and beyond.
|
