Taji Mag Exclusive: Michaela Coel on the Intimacy and Artistry of ‘Mother Mary’

What happens when a global pop icon begins to unravel just as the spotlight demands perfection?

In A24’s Mother Mary, the director David Lowery explores that question through a story that is as much about performance as it is about the absence of clarity,  stability, and connection. The film follows a famous singer, Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway), on the verge of collapse, who turns to Sam (Michaela Coel), a once-close friend now thriving as a fashion designer, in search of something that feels like both forgiveness and healing. 

When I spoke with Lowery and the actress and filmmaker Michaela Coel, our conversation drifted between the emotional makeup of friendship, the tension between visibility and invisibility, and the labor behind identity—both artistic and personal.

At the center of the film is a line that stands out: a reflection on how love and hate can feel indistinguishable at their most intense. Lowery recalled writing it in an unlikely place—a rock climbing gym in Vancouver—while thinking about how overwhelming emotion can distort clarity. In the film, that sentiment becomes a shield for Sam, who insists she has moved on from Mother Mary, even as the narrative reveals she hasn’t fully let go.

“There’s an honesty to it,” Lowery explained, “but also a denial. She’s trying to convince herself that those feelings no longer matter.”

That contradiction between what we say and what we feel drives much of the film’s tension.

Coel, whose performance as Sam is both guarded and quietly combustible, pushed back on the idea that her character’s emotional distance was something she imposed. “It’s all in the writing,” she said. “You realize why she’s guarded as you go.”

Her portrayal lives in that restraint. Sam is someone who has built a life rooted in control—through fashion, through discipline, and passion—but is still tethered to a past she can’t fully articulate. The film suggests that creativity itself can be both a refuge and a reminder.

That tension becomes especially visible in one of the film’s most striking sequences, where Sam watches Mother Mary dance without music. The moment shows Sam’s current feelings toward her former friend: she no longer listens to the music they once shared, reflecting the unraveling of their friendship. The scene unfolds without dialogue, relying entirely on reaction and presence. Lowery described the moment as something that surprised even the people making it. “None of us completely knew what was going to happen,” he said. “But watching it back, you could see the emotional arc unfold in real time.”

It’s a scene that speaks to Lowery’s larger ambition: to make a dialogue-heavy film that still feels interpretive, even abstract. After working on projects like The Green Knight, he found himself drawn to the intimacy of conversations, two actors in a room, working through language.

“I wanted everything else—the camera, the blocking—to come second to the words,” he said.

And yet, Mother Mary is equally invested in what goes unsaid.

Part of that silence exists in the dynamic between visibility and obscurity. Mother Mary is a figure defined by spectacle, while Sam operates in a quieter, more controlled space. But as Coel noted, one cannot exist without the other. “Highly visible people don’t exist without less visible people making them visible,” she said.

That idea extends beyond fame; it speaks to collaboration, to friendship, and to the uneasy balance of being seen versus being known.

The film also gestures toward the machinery behind pop stardom. While artists like FKA twigs and Charli XCX contributed musically, Lowery approached the genre as both a fan and an outsider. Watching their process helped him better understand the layered construction of pop itself—how something can feel immediate even as it is meticulously built.

“Pop music is incredibly specific but also enormously inclusive,” he said. “That helped me understand who Mother Mary was.”

For Coel, preparing to play a fashion designer meant briefly stepping into that world—visiting the Schiaparelli atelier and working closely with costume designers. But she was quick to downplay any transformation into a technical expert. “I was reliant on the people around me,” she said. “They made sure I looked convincing.”

There’s a humility in that acknowledgment, one that mirrors the film’s broader interest in illusion—how much of what we see is constructed, and how much is felt.

Even the film’s central figure remains partially obscured. Mother Mary is never given another name, a choice Lowery said was intentional. “She’s always Mother Mary,” he said. “Anything else felt unnecessary.” 

In a film so concerned with identity, that absence feels deliberate, an insistence that some personas are too constructed to be separated from their mythology.

By the end of our conversation, Michaela Coel slipped into a moment of playful storytelling that felt surprisingly revealing. When I asked what might happen if her Chewing Gum character Tracey crossed paths with Sam, she imagined chaos—Tracey as an intern at the atelier who accidentally burns the place down, forcing Sam out of her isolated, depressive state and into a kind of reluctant rebirth in the city. It was funny, but also oddly fitting for a character so emotionally contained. David Lowery jumped in, laughing, to point out that an earlier draft of the film actually included Sam’s house burning down before Mother Mary arrives. 

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Mother Mary is a film about forgiveness, grief, passion, and obsession. It’s deeply emotional, gradually slipping into something more supernatural, with hints of horror woven throughout. The film offers something we can all sit with and unpack, especially when it comes to relationships. Beneath the success, the achievements, the money, and the lavish fashion, there’s a deeper truth: the human spirit still longs for something intangible, something priceless, yet deeply desired.