Carey Mulligan is an amazing actress and she seems like a pretty cool person, but I have no idea why Anna Wintour decided that Carey should be November’s Vogue cover star. Carey is promoting her role in Maestro, where she plays Felicia Montealegre, Leonard Bernstein’s wife, so most of her scenes are opposite Bradley Cooper and his offensive prosthetic nose. While I know Maestro is already being hyped for the awards season, it just feels like… I don’t know, maybe if Carey’s performance is really good, they should let it be a slow-burn Oscar campaign rather than putting her front and center. The one piece of “breaking news” here is that she was quietly pregnant and gave birth to her third child in the early summer. Some highlights from her Vogue interview, which was conducted pre-strike (because Maestro doesn’t have a waiver for promotion, as far as I know):
‘Maestro’ is a duet, not a solo: “I know people will talk about Maestro as a biopic, but it’s not—it’s a movie about a marriage. A very complicated marriage.”
Life in the country with three kids: “It’s very normal. School runs, Sunday lunches.”
Felicia & Lenny’s connection: “Their connection was profound. They lit each other up. You can hear it: There are tapes of them trading anecdotes and it’s like they’re dancing.” The arrangement may have been unorthodox, in that Montealegre accepted her husband’s affairs—up to a point—but need that mean the bond was defective? “For her, the betrayal wasn’t sex; it was when she felt someone else intruding into the space she held for him, being the person who understood him, who was necessary.”
She doesn’t have a career strategy: “I’m terribly unstrategic. It’s really all about the script—and a part where I don’t know exactly how I’d do it. I think,” she adds, remarking on her disinclination to launch her own production shingle, “that’s why I don’t develop my own material. I’d know too much. I really prefer for a great project to hit me like a comet.”
Her weird life as a part-time actress: “You know how in Doctor Who, there’s the TARDIS, and it’s a phone booth, but when you step inside, you travel through time and space? Sometimes, that’s how my life feels…. Like, most days I’m just me, I don’t feel famous when I’m out in the country, most of my friends aren’t in the industry, I have this nice, very regular life. And then every once in a while I step into a magic phone box, and—whoosh—I come out the other side in a designer gown and there are lights flashing everywhere.”
She barely gets personal in the interview, she just arrived at a coffeeshop with her weeks-old baby in her arms and that was the confirmation that she had her third child. She’s married to Marcus Mumford and we never hear anything about their marriage or anything else. In some ways, I’m sure she loves the normalcy, but in other ways… what a strange existence. Anyway, I’m sure she is great in Maestro, she’s great in everything. But I’m not looking forward to the movie, mostly because of that nose.
Cover & IG courtesy of Vogue.
Felicia was Chilian on her mother’s side and was born in Costa Rica.
And a straight up Anglo Saxon was casted to play her.
I mean……
Montealegre’s ancestry was European Spanish and Jewish. Mulligan’s ancestry is Celtic, not Anglo Saxon, in that she is Irish and Welsh. Mulligan’s background is therefore ethnically closer to Montealegre’s than you’re assuming, in that Celtiberean lineages are ethnically and linguistically linked.
She also campaigned for her role in Drive which was written as a Latina.
I would have very much wanted to see a movie based on the life and works of Leonard Bernstein.
And his relationships and interactions with his family, male lovers, and the people who came together to make his musicals and the orchestral works a success.
But somehow BCoop, *the nose*, and Carey are not what I had in mind. Even if his kids are seemingly OK with the result.
Too bad, because Carey is not a bad actress.
I saw Maestro at the NYFF and Carey Mulligan is AMAZING in it. And I was pleasantly surprised that Cooper’s nose, which was so annoying in black and white photos, is not distracting in the movie. The makeup work in this film is really impressive.
🍼 💕
She’s very boring. Butter wouldn’t melt with this one.
I’m confused by your comment. Does everyone have to be scandalous or wacky? But then you’re also saying that she has something to hide.. so it seems oxymoronic because then she wouldn’t be as boring as you think she is.
She’s not dramatic or anything IRL it seems like but I think Carey is a good actress. Her work speaks more than herself, which I think is kind of refreshing nowadays.