Streep stars opposite her real-life daughter Mamie Gummer, who plays Ricki's daughter, a stay-at-home mum who devotes her life to her family and turns out to be the kind of mother that Ricki never was to her.
"Mamie is very dramatic and always has been, from the age of three - or maybe three months - so we've been acting together for a long time," says Streep. "I'm so in awe of her and her willingness to go bare bones at it. It's tough to come into our business with a mother who's so prominent in Hollywood, but kids have a unique vision of their parents, which is not really to put them on a pedestal. So, finding a way to be mad at me, manufacture rage - no problem."
Streep says that part of the reason for the distance between the mother and daughter characters is because they are so alike. "I think they're both quick to rise to a fight," says Streep. "They both see things as outsiders; they both see themselves as the truth teller. The apple doesn't fall far. They both live their truth, no apologies."
For Gummer: "It was more challenging than I anticipated, but also very rewarding and a rich experience. It was tricky and fun, and enlightening and empowering - every human emotion came into play. She's the person who I'm intrinsically connected to, so to examine that bond and take it apart and put it back together every day was intense."
Playing this role offered Streep the chance to be paired in scenes with her actress daughter, Mamie Gummer (Cake, Side Effects). A mother-daughter story at its core, the real-life frisson that results gives the film added potency. Demme insisted that the two not talk outside of the scenes. Very close in real life, their estrangement on film is as palpable as their resemblance. True genetics adds a rare level of reality to the film.
For almost 40 years, Streep has portrayed an astonishing array of characters in a career that has cut its own unique path from the theatre through film and television and earned a 19th Academy Award nomination for her role as The Witch in Into the Woods.
In Ricki and the Flash, directed by Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) Streep and Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno), Streep plays a guitar-shredding, hard-rocking mama, filled with regret for the mistakes of her past.
"We all have to live with our mistakes," says Streep. "I think she wishes that her kids liked her more, understood her - I think that is a regret - but she's pretty clear-eyed about it. Ricki lives in the moment - she acts on the impulse that feels imperative to her. It's a relief to play someone who doesn't act how everybody thinks she should be. She's saying: 'I can't help being the way I am.'"
"Ricki Rendazzo is definitely a Meryl Streep we've never seen before," says Demme. "Meryl has been taking these incredible acting chances - bringing to life some famous figures, or the terrifying witch in Into the Woods, she's doing a lot of extreme characters. In this film, Ricki has her extremes, but Meryl plays it so down-to-earth - an actual, authentic, singing guitar player, a real twenty-first century woman."
"It's not tied up in a bow - it feels like real people," adds Streep. "They're real, complicated, bumpy, messy dilemmas. It ends up being funny, but it's heartbreaking, too."
Demme's vision for the film, from the very beginning, was to make the band real. "With this kind of character-driven film, we have to make people feel like it's real," he says. "It never occurred to me to do anything other than make the band real. The customary thing is that the band pretends to play, and you overlay a previously recorded, perfect track, but I didn't want to do that - I wanted this great band, with Meryl at the centre, to really get out there and play.
Streep, already a talented singer, trained for months to play the guitar, learning on an acoustic guitar with a teacher in New York before moving to the electric guitar about under the guidance of teacher Neil Citron.
At Ricki's side, on lead guitar, Demme cast rock legend Rick Springfield. Best known for his 80s-era hits, Springfield's career has taken on new dimensions with multifaceted and complex acting roles.
"Rick is very alive and in the moment, as a person, a performer and an actor," says Streep. "That's a beautiful quality and a necessary one for Greg, because he's a tender character. He's the lead guitar in The Flash, but he also aspires to be the man in Ricki's life. Greg just wants her to jump in with both feet, but Ricki has a lot of problems committing, and she's really not sure she can make it not be a lie."
"Learning guitar was fun, but it was a private enterprise and then, all of a sudden, Jonathan said: 'We're going to get two weeks and the band's going to get together.' I thought, two weeks?! Two weeks to become a band?" Streep recalls. "It didn't seem like enough time, but those guys were so great. They were very gentle with me and forgiving in the very beginning, because I really couldn't keep up with them. Then, around the sixth day, we hit a groove and then we couldn't stop playing. We played and played and played and I really get why Ricki wanted never to give that up, because it's soooooo much fun."
Of course, Streep not only learned to play the guitar, but became a full-fledged rock 'n' roll performer, too.
"Like all of Meryl's moves, every moment is something that comes out of her," Demme says. "On one song, 'Let's Work Together,' she leaves the bandstand, plays her way through the crowd, goes up to the bar, has a drink - all on her own. I'm like: 'Where did you get those moves?' and she said, 'That's just what I felt like doing at the time.'"
