Eve Hewson had to face the fear to star in Flora And Son – Contenders Film LA

By throwing himself headlong into the title role Flora and sonEve Hewson – the daughter of U2 frontman Bono – overcame her fear of singing, the actress said during Deadline’s Contenders Film: Los Angeles in a panel with co-star Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the film’s composer and lead songwriter, Gary Clark.

Hewson, who played instruments before turning to acting, said she jumped at the chance to play Flora, despite the vocal work the role would require, because she loved the script and the character – ‘ A struggling but very fiery single mother in Dublin is trying to make peace with the wayward teenage son she gave birth to as a teenager.

“I just thought: ‘I couldn’t let this person leave me. I have to play this role. And I just have to get over my fear of singing – it’s not something I’ve ever wanted to do – and just go for it,” she said.

“And in the end it was such a rewarding experience on many different levels, but [on] It’s almost like a psychological-emotional level for me, it’s like I’ve faced my fear and overcome it and I feel pretty good about it.

RELATED: ‘Flora And Son’ Review: Eve Hewson Breaks Out In John Carney’s Latest Film

In the Apple Original Films release, Flora is at her wits’ end when she picks up a guitar she previously planned to give to her son Max (Orén Kinlan), a fan of DJ and hip-hop culture who likes, preferred to throw blows on his son’s body. Laptop.

Asking for musical help online, Flora hires a burned-out LA singer-songwriter, Jeff (Gordon-Levitt), to teach her the basics of the six-string. As this long-distance relationship deepens, mother and son strike up a musical partnership of their own in Dublin, with Max on the beats and Flora on the guitar she rescued from a dumpster.

Music is both foreground and background in this comic slice of life story about the power of music to help people find each other.

RELATED: ‘Flora And Son’ Songwriter-Composer Gary Clark On How He And Director John Carney Found The High Life – Audio & Film

Gordon-Levitt, who performs the rooftop duet “Meet in the Middle” with Hewson in a key scene, seemed to have none of his co-star’s reservations about his performance.

“Oh man, you gotta let me do it. “It’s about a guy who teaches guitar on the Internet,” the former guitarist and songwriter (and founder of the online music and art company HitRecord) told writer-director John Carney.

“He initially wanted a professional, established musician,” Gordon-Levitt said. “I thought, ‘No, what you need is someone who’s not a musician, but can play enough and feel like a real guy.’ “

Meanwhile, the on-screen partnership between Flora and Max represents a kind of domestic truce and, after some musical trial and error, which the film shows without hesitation, eventually leads to the honest song “High Life”. ‘. .”

The endearing “High Life” was written for the film by Scottish musician Clark, who scored a transatlantic hit in the 1980s with “Mary’s Prayer,” a melancholic pop song by his band Danny Wilson.

Clark said that the songs he wrote for the film – and one he co-wrote with Hewson and Gordon-Levitt – walked a “fine line” between sounding like the work of amateur musicians just finding their voices and composed enough to transcend the sound of being there. audible.

For example, after filming a scene from “High Life,” he played it back and thought, “The song felt too stiff and just too professional.” So he started to “reverse engineer” the more original version and “remove some parts”. to loosen,” he said.

And when Carney asked for a less evolved version of “Meet in the Middle” to reflect the song’s evolution, Clark had to work back again from the umbrella version sung by Gordon-Levitt and Hewson — themselves (and our ). ). (here) also intentionally left incomplete for story reasons.

“I tried to make it sound a little boring by adding an extra line that you would never do as a songwriter,” Clark said. “And Joe is a songwriter – he’s very reserved about it. I played it for him and he said, “Gary, do you think we should only have two lines in there?” And I thought, “No, I’m trying to make it boring, Joe.”

The good news, Hewson said, is that she, Gordon-Levitt and Clark have moved on and finally put the finishing touches on “Meet in the Middle.”

“In the script, Joe says, ‘Now we just need a bridge,'” Clark said. “So we wrote a bridge.”

Come back on Monday for the panel video.

Presenting sponsor Together for business.
Flight, Camera, Unite! Support the entertainment industry with exclusive benefits and discounts.