Mamie Gummer has revealed how working with her mother Meryl Streep was “more challenging” than she expected.
The 32-year-old actress is reunited with her Oscar-winning mum on the big screen for musical Ricki And The Flash.
Their first appearance together was when Mamie was just a baby in the 1986 comedy Heartburn, and more recently, in 2007 drama Evening, where Mamie portrayed the younger version of her mother’s character.
“It was more challenging than I anticipated, but also very rewarding and a rich experience,” she said.
The film, written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jonathan Demme, sees the mother and daughter’s relationship under strain.
Meryl, 66, stars as Ricki Rendazzo, a guitar-toting rock singer who left her family behind in pursuit of stardom, and Mamie as her estranged daughter, Julie.
“It was tricky and fun and enlightening and empowering – every human emotion came into play,” Mamie explained.
“She’s the person who I’m intrinsically connected to, so to examine that bond, and take it apart and put it back together every day, was intense.”
The director was determined to create a distance between the pair between takes, and kept Mamie in the dark about his plan.
“He told my mom he was determined to keep us physically separated on set in between set-ups, but no one told me that. So I was sort of off on the side, wondering why no one was talking to me, like, ‘Why is everybody hanging out without me?’,” the star confessed.
She added: “I think in hindsight, he was trying to feed into the feeling that Julie has of being abandoned, and I think he wanted to p*** me off a little bit. He’s got an approach to film which is so devoted, and he’s so passionate that it’s almost like a dogma.”
Mamie – Meryl’s second of four children with sculptor husband Don – admitted her famous mum can sometimes be embarrassing.
“We always attracted a lot of attention publicly, but she has all these sorts of devices and ideas for disguises that are very questionable; like she’ll wear funny hats. That can be embarrassing…” she revealed.
Ricki And The Flash is in cinemas now.
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