Original title: Amanda Seyfried on Going Feral to Play Shakers Founder Ann Lee: “I’ve Never Been Let Loose”
Amanda Seyfried tackled a tall task by stepping into the shoes and strict religious beliefs of Shakers founder Ann Lee for her new film, The Testament of Ann Lee, which is not quite a musical nor a straightforward biopic. The film’s writer and co-director Mona Fastvold fielded an obvious question during today’s Venice Film Festival press conference: Why Amanda? “Amanda has a lot of power. She’s really strong. She is a wonderful mother. She is a little mad,” Fastvold explained of her Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated star. “So, I knew that she could access those things, the kindness, the gentleness, the tenderness. And she could also access this power and this madness.” The actress toplines the Venice selection directed by Fastvold from a script the filmmaker co-wrote with her The Brutalist partner Brady Corbet. It casts Seyfried opposite Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott, Matthew Beard, Scott Handy, Jamie Bogyo, Viola Prettejohn a