Meryl Streep (left), Simon Helberg (center) and Hugh Grant (right) in Florence Foster Jenkins.
The KCET Cinema Series continued its summer season on Tuesday, July 19 with a screening of Florence Foster Jenkins. The film, out in theaters on August 12, stars Meryl Streep as a wealthy, New York woman who makes a star turn as an opera singer, despite the fact that she cant sing well. Based on the true story of an unlikely music sensation, Florence Foster Jenkins also features Hugh Grant as her devoted husband and Simon Helberg as her accompanist.
Following the screening, KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond offered the audience a dynamic Q&A session with Helberg. The Los Angeles-based actor is perhaps best known to audiences as Howard Wolowitz from the long-running, hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Helberg talked about his background in music and how that helped shape his performance as Cosm McMoon.
The KCET Cinema Series brings audiences advanced movie screenings and Q&A sessions with top-talent. This years summer season launched at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica on June 7 with Genius and will continue on Tuesdays through August 2. Individual admission is still available for the remainder of the summer series without advanced reservations required. Screenings are at 7 p.m.
Mark your calendar! Mark your calendar! The fall KCET Cinema Series continues its run at the Aero Theatre on August 19. The series will screen many of the hopeful Oscar film contenders and the best of festival films. The fall KCET Cinema Series is proudly sponsored by the generosity of the James and Paula Coburn Foundation.
Below is an edited portion of Tuesday nights Q&A session with Helberg, led by Hammond.
On how Simon Helberg landed the part of pianist Cosm McMoon
[Stephen Frears is] an amazing director. He doesnt say a whole lot. The only thing he did say in the whole meeting was, Can you play the piano? Tell me about, what, how much can you play? Can you play anything? Are you a professional piano... -- and that was all he asked.
I just started lying eventually. I play the piano, but I played until was about 16, semi-professionally in jazz and totally different than this. I said, Oh, I can fake it so well because I know how to put my hands on the piano and where they should be. It will look very real. He just kept saying, But you can play anything though, right? I said, Yes yes. By the end, I lied and then I got the part. I had to learn how to become a classical pianist -- I had four months.
It was also a tricky one too. Aside from the difficulty of the pieces by themselves, then there was the addition of the character. I ended up being an actor and who this character was and how he would play the piano.
I could make it through some of them and I would be contorting and sweating through it, but this guy was a real, trained piano player and then he had to compensate for her lack of ability. He would, if she forgot a note, he would give it to her kind of discreetly or if she skipped a measure, he would adjust. He changed keys sometimes to find what key she was in. He was actually extraordinarily good. She just had to be bad, Meryl, that was easy. No, what she did is also insane, obviously. She actually had to learn those pieces well. We both had to learn them well in order to just shit all over them.
Simon Helberg in Florence Foster Jenkins.
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On rehearsing with Meryl Streep
It was probably about a couple weeks, intensely. I met her in New York and, like anybody, I did not believe what was happening. The way this all came about was very -- I have gotten to do some other movies and Im on a great show and all that, but Stephen didnt know. Stephen didnt know what The Big Bang Theory was. I dont think he knew why he was sitting down with me.
This casting director, Kathleen Chopin, said You have to meet this guy. She cast the movie Well Never Have Paris and said, This is your guy. He, I really dont think he knew. He was holding two cell phones up to me -- they were from, I think, 1999 -- holding the SIM card. Hes just a very eccentric man. He just believed her and he liked me and then the next thing you know, I was meeting Meryl in New York to play opera and we didnt know if it was going to work. It went so wonderfully bad that we knew we had something magical.
I was nervous, but she is as great of an actress as she is, part of the reason shes so great is because she is that sensitive of a human being and so shes aware that people, when they meet her, they start twitching and convulsing. She immediately disarms you. She came up and she touched my face and said, There you are. I didnt know if she would recognize; I didnt know what she would be like. There you are and were so lucky to have you.
On recording at Abbey Road
My two dreams happened simultaneously, which was go to Abbey Road and record an album and work with Meryl Streep. I did both.
Then they threw that out and we just recorded all of the music live. Everything you see in the film, we were playing in the moment on film.
It was one terrifying, paralyzing moment after the next. After a week of recording an album at Abbey Road, Great, now well just shoot all that stuff live. But, I think thats why it feels very alive when you see the music.
Pete Hammond and Simon Helberg discuss Florence Foster Jenkins. | Photo: Liz Ohanesian.
On recording the films big performance
Part of what also makes her such a genius is that she sees the movie, the entirety, in every moment. Its not just about her, her performance. Its about getting the story and telling it the best way that it can be told. One of those ways was she knew that that sequence was going to be 45 angles of her singing badly and at the end, because they want to treat her as a star, they save all of the background shots, the extras, the 300 people in the audience, they wo
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Meryl Streep (left), Simon Helberg (center) and Hugh Grant (right) in Florence Foster Jenkins. 
