“I knew it when I saw it”: the surprising movie Meryl Streep called valuable
Based entirely on the fact she’s Meryl Streep, any new role the legendary actor signs on for has a very high probability of being nominated for one of the biggest and most prestigious awards in the business, which speaks volumes to her standing as of cinema’s true greats.
After all, her record-setting haul of 21 Academy Award nominations includes a whopping 17 in the ‘Best Actress’ category, and she’s also the most-nominated performer in the history of the Golden Globes after accruing a mind-boggling 34 nods.
Her trophy cabinet includes three Oscars, nine Golden Globes, two Baftas, three Primetime Emmys, and a pair of Screen Actors Guild Awards. However, Streep is currently in the midst of her longest-ever spell in the wilderness from the most notable gala on the industry calendar.
Streep hasn’t been shortlisted for an Oscar since 2018 despite racking up eight features following her ‘Best Actress’-nominated turn in Steven Spielberg’s The Post, whereas she’d never gone more than five years without being nominated following her first nod for The Deer Hunter back in 1979.
Not that she’s been slacking, although her absence from the awards circuit has coincided with Streep opting for a change of pace and taking on lighter, fluffier roles with increasing regularity. Prime among them was Mamma Mia!, with the musical and its sequel Here We Go Again! comfortably the highest-grossing entries in her filmography.
After 30 years of mining the emotional depths for powerhouse performance after powerhouse performance, Streep had more than earned the right to have a little fun. However, she was keen to point out that signing on for Mamma Mia! wasn’t a deliberately plotted pivot but simply a part she wanted to play that came along at the right time.
“I’m not strategising my career moves at all,” she said to The Guardian. “I haven’t got a career that I’m building.” That’s completely correct because she built it a long time ago, but what drew her to Mamma Mia! above all is that she wanted to tell a story that doesn’t get told all that often, one geared towards a specific demographic that hasn’t historically been well-served in terms of mainstream crowd-pleasers.
“I just want to do things that are valuable to introduce to the culture. This film is a valuable thing,” she said of Mamma Mia!. “I knew it when I saw it. It’s a requirement of popular culture that you strike an ironic distance. This doesn’t. It’s a film about women and their whole experiences being hopeful and youthful and older and suffering the regrets that you have over a long life. It’s visceral, and I love that.”
Streep might be one of the very few people to have ever referred to Mamma Mia! as “visceral,” but that doesn’t mean the toe-tapping duology wasn’t a detour worth taking when it thrilled audiences all over the world.
