Playing in select cinemas and now on smaller screens on Netflix worldwide is the movie version of the hit Broadway musical, The Prom. Directed by Ryan Murphy, the film is a dazzling feel-good film for all the family, and an absolute delight to watch from start to finish. The film features an all-star cast that includes Meryl Streep, James Corden, Keegan-Michael Key, Kerry Washington and introduces the hugely talented Jo Ellen Pellman and Ariana DeBose to audiences.
The film follows four New York stage actors who embark on a journey to small town Indiana to help a student who has been banned from bringing her girlfriend to her high school prom.
A couple of weeks ago, Murphy and his cast took to Zoom to partake in the global press conference for the film. It was an interesting event where Murphy kicked off proceeds to take about when he first saw the Broadway show, which is courtesy of impressive, catchy music by Matthew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin, and a book by Bob Martin and Beguelin.
“I saw The Prom on Broadway. It remember it so vividly. It was a very snowy night in January of 2019. I went just as a fan. I was invited and I wanted to see it. I walked into the musical not really – I knew what it was vaguely – but I had the experience when it was playing that I saw families in the audience. I saw people laughing and crying and having a very big experience, which I ultimately had.““
The filmmaker, currently hot-property on the streaming service following 2020 hits Hollywood and Ratched (as well as the ‘American Horror Story’ series amongst others), spoke about how it spoke to him personally. “The thing that was interesting to me is the heroine is from Indiana. She is denied going to her prom and half way through the musical; I realised that that was my experience. I’m from Indiana, and I was not allowed to go to my prom. So, it became a very personal thing for me, and I thought that it had so much joy and optimism and it was about something, and yet it was also just fun.”
“I walked out of there, and I had dinner with the producer, and I said I really want to make this [into] a movie. He said ‘okay, great’, so it started from there. It was very quick and spontaneous. I just loved the feeling – how it made me feel – it was very old fashioned, it was like a valentine and I love that about it.”
Jo Ellen Pellman is Emma Nolan, the girl at the heart of the story who only wants one thing, to take her love to the prom and be herself. Pellman, spoke about getting one of the lead roles.
“I’m originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, so I have strong connection to the mid-west. I studied musical theatre in college and I was a huge theatre kid growing up. I am such a lover of the craft. I saw this show on Broadway with my mom and it is so personal to me because I’m queer, and I came out in high school – also in the Midwest. It’s a wild experience and so being able to tell this story with this cast is quite literally my dream come true.”
Ariana DeBose plays Emma’s girlfriend, Alyssa Greene: “I saw The Prom three times on Broadway, and every time I laughed harder, I cried harder; I was just more and more moved by everything I saw, and everything that I witnessed. There are so many different types of people in that audience – in particular, I noticed so many young girls – and lots of young girls of colour, actually. When this opportunity came to me, I really thought about it and I went after it because I knowhow important it is to see yourself reflected on a screen. Because if you see it, you can believe that you can do it, and I wanted to be a part of telling this story. Also, it was the first time that I’d seen anything close to, even potentially, my experience, on a Broadway stage, so yeah, I cried a lot to what I saw. Still blubbering. That’s why I was so honoured when Ryan asked me to do this.”
Meryl Streep is Broadway queen Dee Dee Allen, whose career suffers a setback following the opening of her latest production, Eleanor! The role, not her first foray into the big-screen musical world following Mamma Mia!, did find the part of Allen a little demanding, thjough “I’m the oldest person in the cast, and I have the most dancing,” the screen icon exclaimed.
Streep also spoke of the first time she saw the source material on the stage: “When I saw the show, which I had not seen before, Ryan called and said ‘do you want to maybe look at this project?’ I went to the theatre and I hadn’t seen it because I though I would go ‘next week’. I went to the theatre to find out that it was closing, and I couldn’t believe it was closing because it was absolutely packed – I’ve never heard a reaction like that in a theatre. People were standing on their chairs at the curtain call. I mean screaming, and crying, and laughing. But, I noticed that the leading lady didn’t do a lot of dancing. All hell broke loose when I go t to Los Angeles and they laid out for me what it was. It was a lot of dancing. I got in shape; it’s a lot of stamina… man, it was hard work but it was really, really fun.”
In a rare occurrence for a huge production like this, there were weeks of rehearsals, a kind of boot camp where the cast and director mapped out the demanding dance numbers. “We took over a very large space at Paramount Pictures and we rehearsed and trained as much as we could,” Murphy explains. “That was one of the great things. There’s not a lot of rehearsals when you’re doing film or television, but with this we had built it into the schedule. I think when you’re making a musical you just its where the cast bonds. They kind of become a Broadway troupe; it was interesting, and everyone cheered each other on. There were injuries in ice; it became a great bonding experience and everyone was free to try things it was cool.”
Nicole Kidman, who plays Angie Dickinson, another Broadway veteran. also described the pre-production rehearsal regimes. “We diligently rehearsed. Because I was doing [Bob] Fosse, I came in thinking ‘yes, I can do this’. It was terrifying because the Fosse dancing is so specific, but I had this amazing group of dancers that trained me and trained me [who had] the patience of saints, and actually it was really fun. I remember seeing Meryl do her first number on the first week and just [went] ‘oh my god, this is so, so good’. I just looked at her and went ‘what? You can do that too?'”.
Of course, there’s huge message at the core of the film – and a villain of the piece, too – Mrs. Greene, portrayed by Kerry Washington.
“It’s really fun to be the big it in this one,” the actor says smiling.
Washington then was asked whether a film like this, or pop culture similar to this, can spark change.
“I think for a lot of people when they sit in the dark and have transformative thoughts is in movie theatres or in their living room watching TV. That’s the stillness that many of us engage in when we sit and we watch these stories. There aren’t just the ones that play in our mind but they’re the stories that inform us who we are as a society and a culture. And we get these moments to look at these characters and say ‘oh, I see myself there’ or ‘I see who I don’t want to be’, in the case of Mrs Greene. I think it’s powerful.”
She adds, “It’s not the only way to make change; we need people on the streets, we need people voting; we need people writing legislation; we need all of that but I think that art has a place in the conversation, and because it gets to our hearts. This is such a powerful story about acceptance and just the power to create community where you need it – when you fight for your own belonging, you create belonging for other people. It’s just a beautiful, powerful story and I’m happy to be the bad guy, to try to get in the way and be unsuccessful.”
The Prom is now streaming on Netflix.
