It was a tad perplexing when acclaimed filmmaker Cameron Crowe (“Almost Famous”) went with actress Anya Taylor-Joy (“The Menu,” “The Queen’s Gambit”) to play a young Joni Mitchell for an upcoming music biopic given that there had been many folks calling for “Mamma Mia” star Amanda Syfried (“The Housemaid,” “The Testament of Ann Lee”) to play her after covering Mitchell’s song “California” while appearing on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” eariler in the year. Ultimately, Taylor-Joy and Oscar-winning Meryl Streep (“The Devil Wears Prada 2”) are playing the beloved Canadian folk singer at different points in her life; Streep is expected to play a present-day iteration. But it sounds like Seyfried nearly played Mitchell in another film.
Seyfried, while during a carrer retrospective at a SAG-AFTRA Foundation event (See video below), revealed that she had been practicing and studying Mitchell’s songs from her album “Blue” for a potential biopic (from a nameless filmmaker or screenwriter, mind you) and even met with the singer, as she was aiming to play Mitchell, even before it was announced Crowe would be making a competing version with Taylor-Joy and Streep (ironically plays Seyfried’s mother in the “Mamma Mia” films) eventually nabbing lead roles in it. But things “halted” after Mitchell’s manager, Elliot Roberts, sadly died in 2019 (he had been “the machine” behind that gestating biopic), and the actress adds that the other project has her “full support.”
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“She was like, ‘Do you play any other instruments?’ And I was like, ‘I play the dulcimer.’ Because I studied Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ album for a potential movie that never happened…Mainly from my perspective, I had met with her on the best nights of my life in Beverly Hills. Her manager died. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story because it’s like it’s tricky because headlines are obnoxious and never really correct, but I don’t want it to but undermine her or you know put a shadow over anything that anybody else is doing right now because they are making a movie about it, and I think it’s a my full support. I love that there that he’s making a movie about her, and before that movie came along, there was this movie, and then her manager died. And, yeah, it felt halted. And so…He was like the machine behind it. He was so in love with the script and so in love with me playing her. And I had the whole pandemic to learn all these songs.”
“I mean, this flight tonight, I, like…almost finished learning on the guitar. I don’t know if anybody knows the guitar harder than I thought it would be. And her tunings are all weird, really weird. Not to judge, but they’re weird. She always had to, like, I don’t know. Each dulcimer song is tuned differently. And I just had the best time. I just had all this time in the world. And I just learned, you know, river obviously is easy. I mastered ‘Richard’ on the piano, which was my final.”
“And I’m a piano player, so that was right up my alley. I felt like an artist. I felt like a more…It enhanced me as an artist entirely. It was just so incredibly personally fulfilling, and I was never going to share it. And then Katsu comes some years later, and I’m just like, yeah, I played it also. What’s that? I was like, Oh, Joni Mitchell plays it. She’s like, ‘Would you want to?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know’…I would have to like pull it out because I hadn’t played in a while. I was like, ‘California’ is like really easy to play. And I was going to do A Case of You, which people love. But I was like, California wildfires, I should just do that to honor it. And I did it, and I was terrified. And I had a little wine beforehand, and I did it in one go, and it went fucking everywhere. And then everybody was calling like, “You’re going to be joining me. [You’ve] got to play. I’ve heard from Joni.’ I mean…That’s all. That’s all it was. It was incredibly validating and unexpected. And it also showed a side of me that I didn’t think I necessarily needed to share, but that I’m so glad I did,” Seyfried said of the experience.
It’s quite interesting that Seyfried was once poised to play Joni Mitchell for another project, although it seems unlikely that Crowe is going to pump the brakes on his version anytime soon, given the backing it has and Streep’s attachment. Perhaps, just another neat “what if?” Hollywood moment.
What is unknown here is who else was behind that other Joni Mitchell biopic, other than her late manager, and how far along they got with it. However, we could theorize that if Seyfried was in a prepping/studying stage, that could signal is may have still been in the scripting or financing stages for that halt.
That full exchange with Seyfried at SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s career retrospective can be viewed below.
