Getting nominated for anOscaris one thing, but getting praise from the person you portrayed is a different thing entirely.
Monica Barbaro, who is up for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playingJoan Baez in theBob Dylan biopic“A Complete Unknown,”had a daunting task — because, as she told her home town paper,The Marin Independent Journal,“I wasn’t a singer. I’m not a singer.”
Instead, Barbaro said she just had to “acknowledge that it’s absolutely impossible to perfect Joan’s voice, or to sound like her.”
The role also required Barbaro to learn guitar — a huge challenge, considering Baez’s playing is very unique.
“Joan’s fingerpicking style is so intricate, so specific, and I had no experience at that,” Barbaro admitted. “I would have a metronome at a snail’s pace to even get two fingers to pluck strings at the same time.”
She said “the imposter syndrome was pretty rampant” when it came time to film her musical scenes because “a lot of our background artists were musicians and actors in their own right.”
Barbaro added, “Once I could put all those things together, singing in front of those people was a terrifying, intimate, vulnerable experience. Not only doing it as Joan but doing it at all.”
Although Baez made herself available to any of the actors who wanted to speak to her, Barbaro was a little apprehensive because she had the singer “pretty high on a pedestal.”
She explained further:
“If I were to interview her and not be playing her in a movie, then I would be incredibly nervous and intimidated to, like, speak to her and not say something stupid. But with the added pressure of embodying her in this film, I really wanted to do her justice, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to speak to her in part because of the intimidation factor.”
But Barbaro changed her mind, in part, because she’d dreamed that she’d met Baez.
“She had proven to be very helpful to the production, and I just felt something in my subconscious kept pushing me to talk to her,” Barbaro said. “And I’m so glad I did.”
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So is Baez, who told the paper how impressed ― and relieved ― she was by Barbaro’s portrayal of her.
“I loved what she did in the film,” Baez said. “If I didn’t think she was good at it, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it in general. But she looked enough like me and she had my gestures down. You could tell who it was. She worked so hard. Kudos to her for taking the role on.”
The Oscars take place March 2 on ABC.