There are many jaw-dropping anecdotes about Monica Barbaro’s improbable road to portraying the legendary Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown.” First off, she auditioned for director James Mangold, knowing she wasn’t a singer. Truth be told, she had barely sung professionally in any capacity. That was gutsy. Secondly, she had to face genuine fears of living up to Baez’s signature vocal singing style, performing live no less. And then, lastly, speaking to Baez herself. Especially after Baez had already documented her rocky relationship with Bob Dylan, portrayed by Timothée Chalamet in the movie.
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Barbaro admits she wasn’t sure if she wanted to reach out to Baez or not. Once filming started, however, she started having dreams about the folk music icon. Specifically, dreams about them hanging out and always having a great time.
‘I was pretty sure my subconscious was just trying to tell me that it would be O.K. to reach out,” Barbaro reveals. “Ed Norton knew her and referenced things that she had told him very generously about this time, about Pete Seeger. And so I felt like the most Joan thing to do would be to reach out. So, I did that, and we had a brief but very beautiful phone conversation, or it was beautiful to me. It was absolutely wild to hear her voice over the phone. And yeah, she’s very open in her memoirs and documentaries. It’s the folk scene. There’s just authenticity within all of them, and that’s what they hold in high regard. So, they’ve been very honest about their relationship with each other. And anything else she said that’s not in her memoir. I wouldn’t repeat it here because it’s private. There’s a lot out there about how she felt about him, and they’ve both expressed a lot of honesty about that time. So, I didn’t feel like there were any major walls that I had to break through or get to the bottom of something that she just wasn’t revealing.’
Later, Barbaro added that she eventually realized, “It’s not going to be perfect. You’re not going to be Joan, but you can take your understanding of her and trust that and then breathe life into it. The last thing I wanted to do was rob her of her colorful, spirited personality.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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The Playlist: Your performance in this movie, and I’m not being hyperbolic, is literally one of my favorites of the year. I thought you were utterly fantastic.
Monica Barbaro: My God, thank you. Thank you for saying that.
Correct me if I’m wrong, you haven’t done any singing in film or television before, have you?
No, I sang a tiny thing in a part of a show one time. It was a really easy song to sing. I think I sang a note in another thing, but all in just sheer terror and all underdone and nothing like this, and I didn’t really seek training for those situations. Yeah, so pretty much, no, no, I wasn’t a singer.
This audition comes your way was it just like, “I know I can do this, I know I can sing.” Or did you not know that was part of the audition when you originally were approached?
Oh, no, I sang for the audition. I think it’s just that actor, that slight insanity where you just sort of believe at least momentarily that you can do anything, or at least, I think I could pull it off at the end of the day. Yeah, it didn’t really dawn on me the shoes that I was trying to fill until I was cast in the role. I had come to love Joan’s voice and put her on a pedestal, and then I was completely terrified. But for the audition process, yeah, I sang. I knew I was supposed to sing and just gave it a shot.
When you knew you were making the movie and you were definitely going to be singing live, did you feel like you had to try to embody Joan’s voice?
I still don’t even really have a very close, comprehensive relationship with my own singing voice. I think that’s something that I’ve been interested in on the backend, just sort of finding where I like that my voice might sit. This process was really mostly just trying to hone in on Joan’s sound or at least get as close as possible. To do that, I worked with a wonderful vocal coach by the name of Eric Vetro, who had the experience under his belt to discuss with me that we had to just get Joan’s more iconic qualities of her voice. She’s known for having that really tight vibrato. She’s known for, especially in this time, singing in really high keys that I could not….at the time I sang for the audition, I sang “House of the Rising Sun,” I think, a whole step down. And so, just trying to yet the musical proficiency level to get just those recognizable entities of her voice down. And then from there, of course, she plays beautifully with dynamics. Her lyricism is just gorgeous. And so, at a certain point, Eric really encouraged me to process the meanings of the songs. And I just tried to consider why does Joan, for instance, hover on the word sister in her version of “House of the Rising Sun”? And you’re like, “What might that mean to her?” And that was coinciding with tons of research. And so yeah, it was just sort of a step-by-step process of grabbing everything I could about her and just trying to embody that as closely as possible.
It’s very well known that Joan and Bob have a complicated relationship. Did you reach out to her? Or was that sort of like, “Hey, this is Bob’s project,” do your sort of research and move on?
For a long time, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. And then, actually, we had started filming, and I kept having dreams about her and specifically dreams where we would hang out, and we always had a great time. And so I was pretty sure my subconscious was just trying to tell me that it would be okay to reach out. Ed Norton knew her and referenced things that she had told him very generously about this time, about Pete Seeger. And so I felt like the most Joan thing to do would be to reach out. So, I did that, and we had a brief but very beautiful phone conversation, or it was beautiful to me. It was absolutely wild to hear her voice over the phone. And yeah, I mean, she’s very open in her memoirs and documentaries. It’s the folk scene. There’s just authenticity within all of them, and that’s what they hold in high regard. So, they’ve been very honest about their relationship with each other. And anything else she said that’s not in her memoir. I wouldn’t repeat it here because it’s private. There’s a lot out there about how she felt about him, and they’ve both expressed a lot of honesty about that time. So, I didn’t feel like there were any major walls that I had to break through or get to the bottom of something that she just wasn’t revealing.