In her new series on Showtime, Jessica Chastain is taking on yet another famous Tammy. This time, it’s legendary country singer Tammy Wynette. George & Tammy follows the careers and famous love life of Wynette and fellow superstar George Jones, played by Michael Shannon, in their six-episode limited series.
Known as “The First Lady of Country,” Wynette’s signature tune, “Stand By Your Man,” is one of the most beloved and best-selling country songs by a female artist of all time and features heavily in the trailer. Many are wondering if it really is Chastain singing the vocals, and it is in indeed her voice you’re hearing.
Both Shannon and Chastain underwent rigorous vocal training for their roles in order to portray these legends of country music, working with vocal coaches and music producers to get them close to sounding like Wynette and Jones. Though conveying the truth of the couple’s passionate-yet-fraught relationship was more important than simply doing a good impression, the pair wanted to do their due diligence and then some when it came to embodying the characters and their voices.
Talking to Variety Chastain discussed how she worked with T Bone Burnett, a record producer, guitarist, and songwriter, to help vocally transform her into Wynette. The actress looks back at the beginnings of this project when she came onto the job around 2010/2011.
“I sat with T Bone maybe six years ago and sang ‘Stand by Your Man’ and said, ‘I just want to know…’ I was like, ‘Is this ridiculous?’ And he’s like, ‘No, no, it’s fine. It’s gonna work. We have work to do, but it’ll work.'”
Burnett then introduced both her and Shannon to Ron Browning, a celebrity and performance coach as well as an acclaimed voice teacher from Nashville. Burnett and Browning coached both of actors right up to pre-recording. It was then that she worked with Rachael Moore, a music producer on the show, saying,
“I am excited for her to have this moment, because she’s worked with T Bone for years and hasn’t really had this kind of opportunity. Once we got on-set, it was her and Ron every day. We did all the singing live, and it was so scary, but I felt like I was in really good hands. I’m excited to celebrate her, because just in the same way that it was tough for Tammy in 1960s Nashville, it’s still tough for women in country music in Nashville. And so for Rachael to have, like, this spotlight on our work, I think, is a really cool thing.”
The first episode of the show premiered on Dec. 4 and became the most-watched premiere in Showtimes 50-year existence according to the channel itself. Chastain is certainly on a roll after her last film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, won her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2022. Her next project sees her treading the boards in the Broadway rendition of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.
You can catch her now in the first episode of George & Tammy available on Showtime.