Beyonce helped Anne Hathaway create a pop-star performance in Mother Mary.
The 43-year-old actress listened to the 44-year-old singer-songwriter's 2024 track American Requiem repeatedly in preparation for the titular role in the A24 psychological drama-thriller, which follows the psychosexual affair between pop singer Mary and fashion designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel).
And studying Beyonce's voice made Hathaway realise she could use a softer voice for her character.
During a Q+A session at a listening event for the movie's soundtrack on Tuesday (14.04.26), Hathaway said: "Her technique in that song is so mesmerising and astonishing - and real.
"Just listening to her phraseology, her musicianship, understanding the history of her voice that had led her to be able to make that sound that is so still, that's so present, I studied that, and I appreciated that Beyoncé can do the runs."
Studying the 35-time Grammy Award winner's "pop phrasing was a really big deal" for the actress.
Hathaway added: "I thought, OK, maybe there's something to be said about having a sweet, still voice. Maybe I can work with this."
The star originally learned to sing in a musical theatre style, and she spent two years retraining her voice in a more contemporary pop style for Mother Mary.
Speaking about her 72-year-old mom, actress Kate McCauley Hathaway, Anne said: "I'm more soft-spoken than she is, and so in my head. I've never really rated myself as a singer. When I was growing up, I was like, 'Whitney Houston, that's a real singer,' and I just can't do runs like that."
With Mother Mary, she added: "It was a completely new way of singing, and it baffled me for the longest time.
"It took about two years before I finally cracked it," she said of the pop star she built. "So much of it was just studying what other singers did and trying to figure out, frankly, why they sounded so cool."
Anne also reached out to 33-year-old singer Charli xcx to prepare for her role in Mother Mary, which also stars Kaia Gerber, 24, Jessica Brown Findlay and FKA Twigs, both 38.
She told People: "The person that I spoke to was Charli ... I wanted to talk to her about the music, she wrote such amazing music that I was going to perform. But I also just had a lot of questions for her about what her life was like, what the experience of being a pop star was."
Pop megastar Taylor Swift's Reputation concert film played a huge part in inspiring some of the scenes in the David Lowery-directed movie.
Lowery, 45, told Empire magazine: "Her Reputation concert film is one of the best concert films ever. It’s truly phenomenal. And for our concert sequences, we looked at that repeatedly. You would not believe the amount of time we were talking about Taylor."
He added: "We took three songs from Reputation and broke it down, shot by shot, and looked at them like: ‘Okay, if we were doing these, how much would these shots cost to do in visual effects?'
"We used that as a budgeting tool, because we didn’t know how to wrap our heads around actually pulling off a stadium concert-show on a minimal budget.
"We were literally using Reputation as a guide. I can go on about Reputation all day."
