Chances are, you saw the trailer for Ricki and the Flash, and wondered how they found an actress who looked so much like the movie's Oscar-winning star to play her daughter. Well, the the answer is simple: the actress who plays Meryl Streep's daughter in Ricki and The Flash is none other than her real-life daughter, Mamie Gummer. Yes, the off-screen relatives play mother and daughter on-screen, for the first time since 1986's Heartburn, when a 20-month-old Gummer played Streep's baby.
Gummer and Streep have actually shared the big screen before, playing different ages of the same character in Evening (2007), but this is their first time starring as mother and daughter in nearly 30 years. And, in those three decades, the on-screen dynamic between Gummer and Streep has changed significantly to show real conflict. In Ricki and the Flash, Streep plays Ricki Randazzo, a rocker who comes home to comfort her estranged daughter Julie (Gummer) after Julie's husband leaves her. Of course, coming home is never easy, especially for Ricki, who left her family 20 years earlier to chase her dream of becoming a rock star. Needless to say, things between the pair are tense.
To make things as real as possible, director Jonathan Demme asked that Gummer and Streep try to keep their distance on set, something that the actresses weren't so happy about. "That worked for about a week... Well, we pretended not to talk to each other on the set, but we rode home together every night in the car!" Streep told Today.
Gummer and Streep seem to have a close relationship, but that doesn't mean Gummer didn't enjoy getting to yell at her mother — as Julie, of course. "It was really fun to be allowed to rage. It feels good, like some kind of primal scream therapy," Gummer told the NY Daily News.
Streep agreed, saying, "She really enjoyed railing at me."
Gummer, 32, is the second of Streep's four children with her husband, Don Gummer, and one of two who has chosen to follow in her mother's footsteps — her younger sister, Grace Gummer, is also an actress. Although the elder Gummer daughter's claim to fame might be her famous lineage, she has more than proven herself to be a capable young actress in her own right. She was the best part of failed television shows Off the Map (2011) and Emily Owens, M.D. (2013), and regularly steals the show as a recurring guest star on The Good Wife (Nancy Crozier, her manipulative lawyer, is a favorite of mine). She has also been building a resume of indie films, including Cake and The End of the Tour.
Gummer has said that she made an effort to keep her career as separate from her mother as possible without shying away from her parentage. In fact, it was Streep who first gave Gummer the script for Ricki and the Flash. "I was sitting at home, she came by, wordlessly dropped the script and walked away," Gummer told Entertainment Weekly.
She continued, "We've been careful and conscientious about how we engage in this silly business together. We didn't talk much about it before stepping onto set the first day. Clearly, I trust she knows what she's doing. She trusted me. We held hands, shut our eyes and jumped off."
Clearly, it worked — even the best actors would be hard to fake the deep bond shared between Ricki and Julie, as showcased by Streep and Gummer.
Images: Sony Pictures (2)
