During her award-winning career, fans have seen Meryl Streep transform into Margaret Thatcher, Emmeline Pankhurst, a high-powered fashion magazine editor and a witch but her latest character must have come as a surprise to even the most hardcore Streep fan.
This latest transformation required a lot of fake tan, a trademark blonde wig, a red tie and a fake belly.
Yes, Streep impersonated presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a gala benefit for the Public Theatre in New York on Monday night.
According to the New York Times, the 66-year-old actress took to the role like a moth to a flame giving “a more than credible version of the presumptive Republican nominee, down to the pursed lips and low-hanging belly. She got the braggadocio-inflected voice, too, even while singing”.
Streep, along with The Good Wife actress Christine Baranski who portrayed presumptive Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, performed a rendition of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from the musical Kiss Me Kate. The decision to do so as Trump was apparently all Streep’s idea.
“There were sceptics, there were doubters but one of those sceptics was not Meryl Streep. She was absolutely sure she could do it,” the theatres’s artistic director Oskar Eustis told the Times. “None of us had seen her in costume or makeup, till she walked out tonight.”
While imitation may be the biggest form of flattery, Streep has previously voiced support for Clinton - a role that surely it’s only a matter of time before Streep takes on given that when Clinton was asked who she’d like to play her in a film last year she instantly replied: “Well, Meryl Streep of course”.
