‘George & Tammy’
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Michael Shannon as George Jones and Jessica Chastain as Tammy Wynette inGeorge & Tammy. (Photo: Dana Hawley/Courtesy of Showtime)
It’s not TV — it’s Showtime. And according to Jessica Chastain, her newprestige cable series George & Tammy plays like “a six-hour movie” ratherthan an episodic show.
The 45-year-old actress portrays celebrated country crooner Tammy Wynette inthe six-part series, which creator Abe Sylvia and director John Hillcoatadapted from the memoir, The Three of Us: Growing Up With Tammy and George ,written by the couple’s daughter, Georgette Jon. Chastain has been attached toplay Wynette since 2011, and the project was initially announced as a movie,with Josh Brolin playing Wynette’s husband and musical collaborator GeorgeJones — now played by her Taking Shelter co-star Michael Shannon.
“There were many years that we were trying to get this off the ground as afilm,” Chastain tells Yahoo Entertainment at an interview marking the UKlaunch of Paramount, adding that condensing the full arc of Wynette andJones’s turbulent relationship into a two- hour theatrical feature would havebeen a difficult — and pricey — task. “[We would] not really be able to getinto where they came from and why they are the way they are as a film,” theactress says. “Also, it would have been expensive, because you have so muchmusic!”
“[We thought] if we could tell this story as a six-hour film, then you’rereally able to get to know the characters, get to know where their pain comesfrom and why they have so much difficulty being happy in some sense,” Chastaincontinues “Nothing about it feels episodic. It feels like the movies they usedto make — these four-hour epics. I feel like in the last 20 years, [peoplehave started to say] ‘It’s gotta be 90 minutes or less.’ I really love moviesthat allow me to get to know the things that maybe some executive in some roommight not think are very interesting, but for me are the must interesting.”
In real life, Jones and Wynette fell in love while touring together in the> late ’60s, leading Wynette to leave her husband, Don Chapel, before marrying> Jones in 1969. The two stayed together until 1975, ultimately driven apart> by Jones’s alcoholism and chronic absences. Wynette — who wrestled with her> own addiction to painkillers — died in 1998, and Jones followed in 2013.
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Although the series is based on their daughter’s memoir, both Wynette andJones wrote their own autobiographies that contain different accounts of theirtumultuous relationship. “There are so many competing versions of all of thesestories,” Shannon acknowledges. “Our scripts are loosely based on Georgette’sbook … but then you read George’s autobiography, you read Tammy’sautobiography and all of the other books that have been written about them andit’s hard to figure out which version is the truth.”
“They had a lot of ups and downs,” Shannon continues. “With George, he wouldactually be pretty healthy for a while and get his act together and then fallapart again.” For Chastain, though, Wynette’s slide into addiction moreclosely resembled “a slow descent into hell.” At the same time, she also seeshope in their story. “Even though they end up marrying other people, they’restill so connected. It’s almost like a spiritual connection that they have. Itgoes on beyond relationships, it goes on beyond death.”
Tammy Wynette and George Jones performed together both during their marriageand after they split. (Photo: Getty Images)
Chastain and Shannon do all of their own singing in George & Tammy_with _TheEyes of Tammy Faye Oscar winner belting out one of Wynette’s most famoustracks, “Stand by Your Man.” That 1968 tune was memorably referenced by HilaryClinton in a 1992 TV interview about former President Bill Clinton’s allegedinfidelities. “You know, I’m not sitting here, some little woman standing bymy man like Tammy Wynette,” Clinton said at the time.
Chastain confesses that she found the prospect of taking on “Stand by YourMan” more daunting than performing any of the songs from Tammy Faye Bakker’sback catalogue. “That song is something that you hear over and over again andit’s so entrenched in the history of country music,” she notes. Also, thegender debate [around it]. It’s such a loaded song that I think most of mynervousness came from that aspect of it.”
“I thought it was pretty critical, because a lot of the story of these twopeople is told through the songs,” notes Shannon. “A lot of the emotion andthe relationship that they had was from singing together, whether they weremarried or divorced or married to other people or throughout their life. Theycame together when they sang and they had a very intimate communication withone another that I don’t think we could have accomplished if we were just lipsyncing to the music.”
Shannon and Chastain George & Tammy. (Photo: Dana Hawley/Courtesy ofShowtime)
Shannon also believes that country music is a crucial part of Americanculture, with performers like Wynette and Jones serving as avatars for workingpeople through their songs. “Both George and Tammy really are salt of theearth people. They come from very humble, rough origins and they really had towork so hard to achieve the success that they had. A lot of these songs areabout love, which is I feel universal.Even though [country music] is a veryAmerican idiom, it’s also a very universal one.”
Given that Chastain now has two Tammy’s on her filmography, is she perhapslooking for a third to complete the hat trick? “I think we’re gonna just haveto create a Tammy — Tammy the Terrible,” she says, laughing. “Maybe I couldplay a character named Tammy the Terrible. I’d see that!”