During a recent global press conference for Netflix’s The Prom, legendary actress Meryl Streep opened up about her challenges while tackling this new musical. From Ryan Murphy’s direction to the intense choreography, Streep spoke about her time on-set making The Prom.
When asked by Courtney Howard about how well the talent handled the choreography, and if there were any mishaps, Streep took over and gave an enthralling answer.
“Well, I’m the oldest person in the cast, and I have the most dancing, which didn’t make sense to me,” says Streep. “I thought, well, when I saw the show, which I had not seen before, Ryan called and said and said, do you want to maybe look at this project? And I went to the theater, and I hadn’t seen it because I thought, well, I’ll go next week or I’ll go. Next week, I went to the theater and found out that it was closing. And I couldn’t believe it was closing because it was absolutely packed with people. I had never heard, honestly, never heard a reaction like that. And the theater people were standing on their chairs, on their seats at the curtain call. I mean, people were screaming and crying and laughing.”
“And anyway, I noticed that the leading lady didn’t do a lot of dancing,” she continues. “I was very encouraged to say. And then, you know, all hell broke loose when I got to Los Angeles, and they laid out for me what it was. So it was a lot of dance. And I got in shape, you know, it’s a lot of stamina. It was hard work, but it was really, really fun.”
No matter what, Meryl Streep handles anything a director throws at her, and the intense choreography of this film was no match. You can catch Streep and the whole cast of The Prom dancing their hearts out on Netflix this Friday, December 11th.
Dee Dee Allen (three-time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep) and Barry Glickman (Tony Award winner James Corden) are New York City stage stars with a crisis on their hands: their expensive new Broadway show is a major flop that has suddenly flatlined their careers. Meanwhile, in small-town Indiana, high school student Emma Nolan (newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman) is experiencing a very different kind of heartbreak: despite the support of the high school principal (Keegan-Michael Key), the head of the PTA (Kerry Washington) has banned her from attending the prom with her girlfriend, Alyssa (Ariana DeBose). When Dee Dee and Barry decide that Emma’s predicament is the perfect cause to help resurrect their public images, they hit the road with Angie (Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman) and Trent (Andrew Rannells), another pair of cynical actors looking for a professional lift. But when their self-absorbed celebrity activism unexpectedly backfires, the foursome find their own lives upended as they rally to give Emma a night where she can truly celebrate who she is.
