It’s just turned 2pm, and I’m perched nervously on my chair in a private room at the back of Claridge’s hotel, waiting for the first lady of Hollywood, Meryl Streep, to show up. Just as I’m reaching for my eighth mini-sandwich, in she strides, as imposing a figure in the flesh as on screen. Instantly she fixes her eyes on me with a look that says ‘I was winning Oscars when you were still a shitting/eating/sleeping machine’ – then smiles, and all the fear flows away.
For somebody on the cusp of their sixtieth birthday, she’s looking gorgeous, certainly placing high in my list of top ten sexagenarians (barring any facial deformities or amputations that might occur between now and June). Not that I tell her any of this. Instead I ask about how she came to make a film like Doubt, ‘Well I’d seen the play, years before, and I…I thought it was a great, great, great play. I thought it was extraordinary, and I never thought it would be made into a movie until John [Patrick Shanley] called and said ‘let’s have lunch and talk about it’. And talk about it they did. At first Streep felt that her close friend, Cherry Jones, would be a better choice, having played Sister Aloysius in the stage version, but for many reasons (marketing undoubtedly foremost among them) Shanley didn’t want anyone other than Streep, ‘John explained that among every other financial consideration there was also the fact that he had not directed that production [in which Jones played the lead] – he wanted his own hands on this, and I thought that’s really valid, and I sure would like a crack at that Sister Aloysius’ – but why? – ‘all really good pieces of literature I think hold a lot of different interpretations- you can see this play over and over again, you’ll see a lot of different kinds of Sister James, and a lot of different interpretations of Mrs Miller- but this one is the one- I’m really proud of this…so what was the question?’
She laughs. I laugh. The room bubbles with it. It feels like we’ve known each other for years. Like we’re the kind of old friends that have never lost that early sexual tension that comes before permanent migration to the ‘friend zone’, knowing that something could always happen, but never will. I ask about the Oscars and more specifically Kate Winslet, ‘as you can imagine, all day, this has come up. And I just have to say…it is so much more fun to publicise a film in July, because you talk about the film. You aren’t talking about the horserace, it’s a completely different thing altogether. It has to do with marketing, and jockeying between studios, and campaigns- it’s a political thing. Having said that, I think Kate Winslet is great…and I’m glad she wasn’t in three movies this year.’ Diplomatic as well? I think I’ve found my soul mate, not that I say so to her face.
And funnily enough, her ‘face’ is the very next topic of conversation. Taking on the role of a nun in Doubt, Streep had to ostensibly forego any make-up, and so I ask how far that prohibition went, and how she coped seeing herself on the big screen without the regulation cosmetics, ‘Well I had a great deal of old-age makeup on’, she chuckles, ‘I mean prosthetics- that nose…you know’, she pauses to collect her thoughts, and then, ‘it’s really freeing, the really free thing about playing these characters, speaking for the nuns, is that you throw away everything that women normally waste a great number of hours of the day on – you throw out what you’re going to wear, how your hair looks, how your face is, and everything is gone. All you are is what you do. And it’s probably the way we should be, you know, instead of wasting a lot of time on the things that get you ahead in the world- because as we know, they do. But it was very, very liberating, and sort of spiritual, if I dare use the word.’ There is a long silence. This is Streep at her most honest, and probably me at my most uncomfortable. But it’s ok, because behind her words sits nearly half a century of experience in the film world – Streep is a woman who knows what she’s talking about, her tone of voice echoing with the sound of comfortable assurance.
After this moment of pensive reflection, we return to the subject at hand, the film, and I ask how she eased herself into the role of Sister Aloysius, what research she may have done, ‘John [Patrick Shanley] did some wonderful interviews with some of the Sisters of Charity [the sisterhood the film is based on], one of whom was his first grade teacher, who was a model for Sister James in a way- she’s 71 now- and so she was just a font of information, she was just an inspiration, because she’s so liberated, and visiting the retirement home, it was really great – they were mostly in their 70s, 80s and 90s, and I don’t know how many retirement or old age homes you’ve been in, but they are not usually places that are happy, you wouldn’t describe them as happy. But these two retirement houses were filled with people who were happy. They were with their family, they were with their sisters, they were all productively engaged in some kind of work- no one was retired, they were all still tutoring kids, they were visiting the bereaved, they were in the communities. Anyway it was a great inspiration…and they taught us how to wear the habits because up until the 60s they were all wearing them.’
After this serious note, the interview turns a little ridiculous. I ask if there is any role she would like to revisit, and if she had to be one of them in real life, which it would be – ‘well I don’t…I have never even imagined revisiting all of those – although there is word of a sequel to Mamma Mia’, we laugh together, ‘I haven’t thought about which one I would be – I think I’m all of them, I think I’m right there if anybody cares to look. Right there in the Rabbi in Angels in America, that’s me. That’s really my father, but I’m a great deal my father’s girl.’
I ask if she thinks there’s a connection between all the roles she’s portrayed in the past, ‘well…yes, people have drawn parallels among my characters – Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada and this, I mean they don’t seem like similar characters to me, although they are similarly women in power, and they are dragons of a sort, and we are still adjusting ourselves to the idea of women leaders, we still aren’t very comfortable with it. And that’s all I’ll say on that subject.’ And then, just like that, she was gone.
