Jessica Chastain Inspired Anne Hathaway's “Possessed” Mother Mary Dance

Anne Hathaway can really do it all.

This year, the Devil Wears Prada icon showed off her pop-star capabilities in Mother Mary, a David Lowery film about a fictional performer who is preparing for her comeback show. Hathaway had to do it all: acting, singing, dancing — and the Oscar winner just revealed that one of the most memorable dance sequences was inspired by none other than Jessica Chastain.

“I have to give a shout out to Jessica Chastain, who, when she did A Doll’s House, did a danse macabre on stage that I saw right before I left to start this,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “It just blew my mind and made me wanna go even deeper than I already had gone.”

Chastain and Hathaway previously co-starred in Mothers’ Instinct together, and have been close since, regularly shouting each other out. Hathaway previously called Chastain “one of the greatest living actresses”, as well as a “darling friend.”

Soon after, Chastain also showered Hathaway with compliments, saying: “You see actresses who have to rev it up for a long time, but she’s not like that. She’s professional, and once cameras roll she is able to conjure up this depth of feeling.”

Mother Mary really showed how committed Hathaway was to the performance. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, she also revealed that she trained for eight hours a day in the months leading up to filming the scene. She worked with choreographer Dani Vitale, known for her work with real-life pop stars like Rihanna, Katy Perry, and BTS.

“I could make a documentary about the making of that dance,” she said.

The sequence itself is a completely silent dance number that turns slightly unsettling by the end. Hathaway said that besides learning the choreography, a huge part of the performance was getting the emotional expression right for such a powerful point in the story — using movement to act as though “you are actually possessed by something.”

As she explained, “At a certain point, what was inside of her took over, and what was inside of her was messy and violent and out of control, and she just had no choice but to let it take over.”

And although the final scene had no music, Hathaway also shared that she performed the dance to two pieces of music on set, which Lowery said “brought out different emotions.”

He added, “There was so much expression that changed from one take to the next.”