The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘George & Tammy’ pulls back the curtain on country icons
In preparation for their upcoming series “George & Tammy,” Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain spent months learning the songs that George Jones and Tammy Wynette made famous, working with a vocal coach and making the pilgrimage to Nashville to record.
“The studio we recorded at butted up against the cemetery where George and Tammy are,” Shannon said. “We would go visit them. It was like this kind of spiritual odyssey that we went on.”
The two Grammy winners and Country Music Hall of Famers sang the most enduring and memorable songs in country music: “He Stopped Loving Her Today,””Stand By Your Man,” “Tennessee Whiskey,” and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” But the relationship between Jones and Wynette during the height of their careers wasn’t the fairy tale romance many fans had hoped for the couple often nicknamed “the first lady and president of country music.”
The limited six-part series premiering Dec. 2 on Showtime pulls back the curtains on their lives as they both struggled with the pressures of fame and addiction and poured their real-life pain, love and heartache into their unforgettable and emotional performances. Chastain, whose production company Freckle Films helped produce the series, said she was drawn to their story after seeing videos of their live performances, noting that their stage presence together — both before and after their marriage — was authentic and sometimes messy.
“I was so interested in learning about what was feeding the stuff that was happening on stage,” the Oscar-winning actor said.
Wynette died in 1998 at the age of 55, of heart failure after years of chronic health issues. Jones died in 2013 at the age of 81. Originally planned as a full-length film, writer Abe Sylvia adapted the series based on the autobiography of Georgette Jones, the daughter of Jones and Wynette.
“One of the big theses of the show is that we’re always looking for somebody else to provide salvation for us in love, and that that’s an impossible task,” said Sylvia during the red carpet premiere in Los Angeles. “What George and Tammy see in each other is someone who might be able to save them. And that’s the ongoing theme of the show.”
The biggest challenge for the actors was singing live during filming in front of hundreds of extras.
“You sing them a cappella because they want to get your take, your vocal take,” said Shannon. “So you have an (in-ear monitor) and you can hear the track. But the extras are just sitting there watching you sing a cappella.”