“My father was not thrilled”: ‘Playboy’, jelly, and Amy Madigan’s forgotten music career
Perhaps it was too mainstream, perhaps it’s because horror traditionally doesn’t do too well at the Oscars, but I really think Weapons should have been more recognised during this year’s awards season than it has been, despite Amy Madigan deservedly picking up ‘Best Supporting Actress’ at the event.
Zach Cregger’s film was a glorious mash-up of genres, packed full of jump scares, a compendium of personal stories skilfully woven into one terrifying narrative, a dash of political commentary, a warning on alcohol, and in Madigan’s Aunt Gladys one of the best movie characters in recent years; it is no surprise whatsoever that she will be taking the lead in a Weapons prequel.
Madigan, of course, delighted the viewing public when she collected her golden statue by basically laughing hysterically and referencing the fact that she’d been at this acting lark for some 40 years between getting her first Oscar nomination for 1985’s Gene Hackman drama Twice in a Lifetime and finally winning one this year.
In the many years between, she had plenty of hits, comedies like the John Candy classic Uncle Buck, Kevin Costner’s baseball movie Field of Dreams and much later Ben Affleck’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone. But none of them caused anywhere near the kind of stir that her satanic, psychotic, perma-smiling witch Gladys has had on movie fans since Weapons was released in 2025.
Now firmly in the spotlight after her Oscars win, Madigan has been looking back over her career and recalling some of the experiences she’s either enjoyed or endured, one of which came all the way back in the 1970s when she was a musician and posed for Playboy, although the rumour that she was nude seems to be off the mark. She told W Magazine, “Well, ‘naked’ is a bit of a misnomer because I was submerged in a bathtub of jelly. I was a musician, and the name of our group was Jelly. Somebody thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be a great idea’, and I said, ‘Sure, I’m up for that!’ My father was not thrilled.”
Madigan’s music career didn’t last long; she moved from rock band to rock band, including Jelly, who released just one album in 1977 called A True Story. She would sometimes tour across the US as well as performing as a solo singer and pianist in Dallas into the early 1980s. Despite switching from music to movies because she felt she had a better chance in the industry, she has previously stated that she greatly misses being a musician.
Cregger and Madigan worked closely to create the character of Aunt Gladys for Weapons, with the director inspired by characters including No Country for Old Men’s assassin Anton Chigurh and the voodoo magic involved in the book The Serpent and the Rainbow, which was adapted into a film by horror master Wes Craven. Madigan was covered in prosthetics for the role, with costume designers trying to give her a dishevelled grandma look, attempting to convey the idea that Gladys tries to dress like someone normal but fails at it.
Some involved in the production of the movie felt that the effectiveness of the character saved the film to some degree, a notion that Cregger agrees with, saying last year, “I’m more than happy to praise Amy in the press all day. She’s incredible in the movie. Without her, it doesn’t work. She saved me. It’s just hard to talk about her character without giving away spoilers, so it’s tricky.”
Cregger, meanwhile, has the opportunity to complete one of the best ‘first three films’ by any recent director after Barbarian, Weapons and now a reboot of Resident Evil, which is due out in cinemas in mid-September this year. He has said that the film won’t feature characters from the original video game series, and it will star Zach Cherry, known for his work on Apple TV’s Severance, and Austin Abrams, who also starred in Weapons.
