Amanda Seyfried on Faith, Fear and The Testament of Ann Lee

Published: 23 January 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online

Amanda Seyfried is not the kind of actor who wants to leave her audience stranded. When the conversation turns to The Testament of Ann Lee, the daring new musical fantasia in which she stars, her first concern is not box office, reviews or awards, but emotional safety. Did you watch it with someone you could talk to afterwards, she asks gently. When she learns that the experience was solitary, her expression shifts to concern. This is a film, she implies, that does things to you. It unsettles, provokes and lingers. It demands processing.

Her instinct is spot on. The Testament of Ann Lee is not a film that slips quietly into the background. It is ecstatic, strange and unapologetically intense: an 18th-century biographical musical about a little-known religious leader, filled with trembling bodies, fervent hymns and moments of levitation. It feels closer to cinematic visions by Lars von Trier or Bruno Dumont than to the polished prestige dramas that often dominate awards season. Whether viewers surrender to it or recoil, indifference is almost impossible.

Seated beside Seyfried in a London hotel room is the film’s writer-director, Mona Fastvold, who looks quietly delighted by that reaction. For her, leaving audiences slightly unmoored is a feature, not a flaw. The film, she explains, is meant to be experienced rather than neatly understood. It is operatic, sometimes solemn, sometimes knowingly absurd, and never interested in conversion. “We can’t be full-on devout Shakers,” she says with a smile. “It’s not about making fun of anyone, but it’s also not about preaching.”

Fastvold co-wrote the screenplay with her partner, Brady Corbet, following their acclaimed collaboration on The Brutalist. As with that Oscar-winning film, immigration sits at the heart of this story, though here the journey is spiritual as much as geographical. Seyfried plays Ann Lee, the illiterate daughter of an English blacksmith from Manchester who, in the mid-18th century, became a central figure in the Shaking Quakers. The sect was defined by ecstatic worship, marked by shaking, trembling and communal song believed to channel divine presence.

The film draws on real Shaker hymns and spirituals, adapted by composer Daniel Blumberg, whose score for The Brutalist earned him an Academy Award. The result is visceral and hypnotic, a musical language that feels raw rather than polished. In 1774, Lee and her followers emigrated to America, settling in what is now New York state. There, they preached pacifism, racial and gender equality and, most controversially, celibacy.

For Ann Lee, faith was forged through suffering. Married against her will, she gave birth to four children, all of whom died in infancy. In the film, that grief becomes a crucible, transforming maternal loss into universal devotion. “She decided to mother the world,” Fastvold says simply. The austerity of Shaker life, echoed in their famously minimalist furniture, becomes a visual and thematic counterpoint to the emotional intensity of their beliefs.

In person, Seyfried and Fastvold could not appear more different. Seyfried, relaxed and expressive, stretches out on the sofa, shoes kicked up, her gestures animated and expansive. Fastvold, a former dancer from Norway, sits upright, composed and almost monkish, hands folded in her lap. Together, they resemble an exuberant student and her quietly devoted governess, united by a shared artistic mission.

Both are keen to emphasise that the film invites laughter as much as reverence. Seyfried has urged audiences not to be afraid of finding humour in its strangeness. That tonal openness, Fastvold agrees, is essential. The Shakers’ practices can appear extreme to modern eyes, but treating them with only solemnity would be dishonest. Absurdity, after all, often coexists with belief.

Fastvold first encountered Ann Lee while researching her earlier film The World to Come. What began as historical curiosity soon became personal necessity. At a time when political leadership across the globe often seems driven by fear, domination and exclusion, she found herself drawn to a figure who led through nurture and equality. Ann Lee’s authority, Fastvold argues, was maternal rather than authoritarian, rooted in care rather than coercion.

The director and star first worked together on The Crowded Room, and later reunited on the crime miniseries Long Bright River. When Fastvold offered Seyfried the script for The Testament of Ann Lee, the actor’s reaction was immediate but conflicted. She recognised a way into the character, she says now, but doubted whether she was the right choice. Perhaps, she suggested at the time, a British actor would be better suited. Fastvold remembers those hesitations fondly, reading them as generosity rather than insecurity.

What convinced Seyfried was Ann Lee’s absolute devotion. “I can understand being brought to your knees like that,” she says. “That feeling of surrender can be delicious, especially for people who need something to believe in.” Yet the role also terrified her. Period work, she admits, always does. The distance from contemporary life makes everything feel riskier. That fear, however, is precisely what makes such roles worthwhile.

Seyfried is no stranger to acclaim. Her performance in Mank earned her an Oscar nomination, and her recent thriller The Housemaid has cemented her commercial appeal. Still, awards recognition for The Testament of Ann Lee has been uneven. Some Academy voters have praised her performance as extraordinary while admitting discomfort with the film itself. Seyfried, for her part, seems unbothered. She has been candid about not needing an Oscar to validate her career. She is, by her own admission, doing just fine.

The demands of the role were immense. Unlike the polished spectacle of Mamma Mia! or Les Misérables, this musical required live singing, relentless physicality and a convincing Mancunian accent. Seyfried trained constantly, watching interviews with Maxine Peake to hone her speech and adapting to choreography that emphasised repetitive, trance-like movement. It was, she says, a full-bodied expression of devotion, exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.

Off set, the intensity gave way to intimacy. Much of the film was shot in Hungary, where Fastvold encouraged a family-friendly environment, inviting cast and crew to bring their children. Towards the end of the shoot, the two women lived together, sharing domestic routines that mirrored the nurturing themes of the film. Socks were folded, coffee prepared, candles lit. These small acts of care left a deep impression on Fastvold, who speaks of nearly crying over neatly balled laundry.

Both women juggle creative ambition with motherhood. They speak openly about letting their children see vulnerability rather than masking it behind duty. For Fastvold, framing work as desire rather than obligation transformed her daughter’s understanding of absence. For Seyfried, honesty about missing her children coexists with the joy of providing them with souvenirs and stories from her travels.

They are generous in their praise of one another. Fastvold describes Seyfried as “a little mad” in the best possible way: playful, unfiltered and fearless. Seyfried, in turn, calls Fastvold brave, marvelling at her willingness to direct a Shaker musical set in the 1770s about a woman most people have never heard of and premiere it on one of the world’s biggest festival stages.

It is hard not to see echoes of Ann Lee in Fastvold herself: a woman pursuing an unconventional vision with quiet conviction. When asked whether the film contains autobiographical elements, she smiles and shrugs. Isn’t there always?