'A Complete Unknown' Interview: Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro

Moviefone speaks with Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro about 'A Complete Unknown'. "It was a really interesting process to navigate the music," Norton said.

The new biopic ‘A Complete Unknown’ opens in theaters on December 25th and chronicles the early life and career of legendary musician Bob Dylan.

Directed By James Mangold (‘Walk the Line’), the film stars Timothée Chalamet (‘Dune: Part Two’) as Dylan, Elle Fanning (‘Maleficent’) as Sylvie Russo, Monica Barbaro (‘Top Gun: Maverick’) as Joan Baez, Ed Norton (‘Motherless Brooklyn’) as Pete Seeger, Scoot McNairy (‘Speak No Evil’) as Woody Guthrie, and Boyd Holbrook (‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’) as Johnny Cash.

Related Article: Movie Review: A Complete Unknown'

(L to R) Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro star in 'A Complete Unknown'.

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of sitting down in-person with Edward Norton and Monica Barbaro to talk about their work on ‘A Complete Unknown’, playing Pete Seeger and Joan Baez respectively, learning to sing and play instruments like their characters, Seeger and Baez’s relationships with Dylan, working with Timothée Chalamet, and what audiences will learn about Dylan's legacy.

You can read the full interviews below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews.

Edward Norton in 'A Complete Unknown'. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

Moviefone: To begin with, Edward, can you talk about your approach to playing Pete Seeger and how challenging was it to learn how to play his instruments the same way he played them?

Edward Norton: The music, and fortunately this enormous body of recorded music and a lot of what Pete Seeger did, he did live, and so you get to hear his music, but you also get to hear, he talked to the crowd a lot and his vocal demeanor, his kind of odd formalism, and it was a great access point and there is an amazing amount of footage of him. That was a good place to start, there's an abundant, recorded visual and auditory library of Pete. I think until you start trying to unpack what he's doing musically; you don't realize how much virtuosity he had as a banjo and a guitar player. He's a monster of a musician, and I've played guitar a long time, but I realized in many ways that it was going to be very difficult on the banjo because there's a lot of modern professional banjo players who don't even play in the style that Pete Seeger played in. He had this special long-necked, you wouldn't call it a baritone banjo, but it was a long neck banjo, and he played a picking style that's very old-fashioned and not a lot of people do anymore. It was an interesting process to navigate the music with our great music supervisor, and James (Mangold) and teachers that I had. It was a challenge is the short answer. That was probably the thing I felt the most. Not anxious, but you really want to get that right. You don't want to not do justice to what amazing musicians these people were.

Monica Barbaro attends Searchlight Pictures' 'A Complete Unknown' World Premiere on Dec 10, 2024 in Los Angeles.

MF: Monica, I understand you had an opportunity to talk to Joan Baez before you began shooting. How did that help inform your performance and did it put you at ease about portraying her on screen?

Monica Barbaro: Well, I was at a place, we had already started filming, and I just kept having dreams about her. It'd be specifically dreams where we were hanging out, and we kept having a great time. I'd wake up in a good mood, and so I was like, "I think subconsciously something's telling me that it's going to be okay, and you should reach out." I knew at that point that Ed had spoken to her, he knows her, and all I've heard is that she's a very creatively generous person, and so I felt emboldened to reach out. I felt like, if it were Joan, she would reach out. So, I was like, "Okay, this is an exercise also in preparing for the bit of confidence that I think she has." We just had a beautiful conversation, and she was very generous with her time, and she answered my questions, and I can safely say her memoirs and her documentaries are all very honest. There was nothing that I felt like she was withholding. So that was just wonderful to confirm that the research I had been doing was on the right path, and what she had offered up was true to her experience.

(L to R) Timothée Chalamet and Monica Barbaro in 'A Complete Unknown'. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

MF: Monica, can you talk about the challenges of learning and preparing for all the musical sequences and really matching the sound of your voice to hers?

MB: I think I've studied her so intensely that all I hear are the differences. I got to work with a lovely vocal coach and what we talked about was really trying to capture some of the more iconic qualities of her voice, the things that everyone says when they describe her voice, like she has this beautiful, tight vibrato, this sort of angelic sound, which I think comes also from singing in high keys, that I at the time couldn't sing in. So just getting to the point of having comfortability with those qualities was the thing that I felt like would at least sell that believability early on. I didn't play guitar either, so I had a great guitar teacher who just doubled down on teaching me her finger picking style. We just tried to formulate some version of Joan with tons of hours of training.

Timothée Chalamet in 'A Complete Unkown'. Photo by Macall Polay, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

MF: Monica, can you talk about how Baez and Dylan’s relationship is depicted in the film and what it was like working on that with Timothée Chalamet?

MB: I mean, I'm such a fan of his work. I am an even bigger fan now. He's an incredible actor, and knowing he was a part of this project was a part of what made me want to do it. Also, James Mangold, of course, and the subject matter. But I had complete trust in him. I mean, I had heard some of his recordings as we were preparing, and so I had even duetted with his voice as Bob. But when we met up and had a music rehearsal, I just was completely blown away. He's an incredible actor, he worked so hard, and to me, he really got a lot of that Bob Dylan essence, and we could just, I think, kind of trust each other's work, and we could show up as our characters and sort of let the scene unfold. We didn't spend a lot of time sitting down and figuring out who we thought they were or what we thought this meant. We took our sort of siloed processes and bridged them in the moment in the scenes that you see. James was an incredible advocate for us and leader in that process, and it was just a beautiful, very present experience.

(L to R) Edward Norton and Timothée Chalamet in 'A Complete Unkown'. Photo by Macall Polay, Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2024 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

MF: Finally, Edward, can you talk about how Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan’s friendship is depicted in the film and what you hope audiences learn about both of their legacies?

EN: I think in a funny way, I never want to impose an idea. I think an audience should get to have their own relationship with it. Here's my point. A great filmmaker will leave people with a lot to resolve for themselves and not instruct emotionally, morally or anything. I think James’ done something quite beautiful in this, in that he lets Dylan be Dylan and Pete be Pete, and they have different kinds of integrity. Joan Baez has her own. I think he gives you this portrait of the different types of integrity that a person can have, and he lets them collide with each other. Different people are going to feel very different ways about it all and then go through the prism of their own experiences and their own mentors and their own people they think they did something for. If you get that right, it transcends the fact that these people were musicians. It can be about teachers or anyone who had a mentor or anyone who had an ally who they went sideways with. I think it's the paradox of people being able to love each other and admire each other and get into cross-purposes with each other that makes it kind of interesting. I think that there was a moment that the film depicts that a lot of people who have great talent and great passion kind of collided with each other. This thing came up and out in the Zeitgeist through Dylan, and then it changed. You know what I mean? I love the way the film sort of almost, it's like the Beatles breaking up. Everything can't last. Maybe if anything, it's like, it's just the observation of that fact that is poignant.

A Complete Unknown

"The ballad of a true original."

R2 hr 20 minDec 25th, 2024

Showtimes & Tickets

Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician BOB DYLAN’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric... Read the Plot

What is the plot of ‘A Complete Unknown’?

Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, ‘A Complete Unknown follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.