Actress Details ‘Mind-Blowing’ Talk with Joan Baez for Dylan Film

The actress who plays Joan Baez in new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown said the real-life star was “not fussed” by the production.

Monica Barbaro has been drawing positive reviews for her portrayal of Baez in A Complete Unknown, with critics saying she captured the character and voice of the ‘60s singer.

But in a new interview with the Guardian, Barbaro admitted she’d never had much time for folk music when he was younger.

READ MORE: How Joan Baez Got Over Her Resentment for Bob Dylan

“In elementary school we would sing ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and, like, ‘Kumbaya,’ but I didn’t have much of a deep relationship with it,” the 34 year-old actress explained.

As a result she felt intimidated when preparing to perform “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” in the movie, which she described as “the first song I sang and played in front of an audience and the hardest song to play, guitar-wise.”

The night before the scene was shot, Barbaro spoke to Baez by phone. “I struggled with this feeling of just so much gratitude for everything she’s done… for being willing to speak to me, and how much I admire her,” the actress said. “I tried to let that get out of the way and just have a conversation, but that’s hard.”

Joan Baez Deserves Her Own Biopic, Says Monica Barbaro

“Having studied her voice so closely – her speaking voice, every interview in the ‘60s – and then hearing Joan’s voice now in her 80s, in real time, speaking to me, was an incredibly emotional experience: really cool and kind of mind-blowing,” Barbaro admitted.

“But she was really not fussed about the film, truly,” the actress continued. “I think I was more concerned on her behalf than she was for herself. I was sort of saying, ‘You deserve your own biopic! So many biopics with different chapters of your life!’

“And she said: ‘I’m just sitting in my back yard watching the birds.’ You know: ‘I lived it, I did it.’”