What are friends for, if not sending a priest to exorcise a seemingly haunted home? During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about her upcoming movie The Post, Meryl Streep offered up a surprising anecdote about her past experience working with director Steven Spielberg.
It might come as a surprise, but the only time Spielberg and Streep worked together prior to The Post was almost two decades ago. Streep had provided voice work for Spielberg's 2000 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which only required a day to complete. Apparently, a lot happened in one day, though — Streep ended up referring Spielberg a priest who could exorcise his home.
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"Most of the time we talked about how his property was haunted and did I know anybody who did exorcisms?" Streep told THR of her experience with Spielberg on A.I. Artificial Intelligence. "And of course, I did. I got him a priest."
There's no word on whether the priest actually exorcised the director's house — or what, exactly, was so haunted about it. Still, Spielberg and Streep have apparently stayed on good enough terms for him to ask her to star in The Post this year.
In an era where our current president tweets about fake news, the movie couldn't be more timely, even though it's set in 1971. The Post focuses on Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham (Streep) and editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and their decision to report on and publish The Pentagon Papers. The New York Times was also reporting the news, but it was still controversial for the Post to do so — the real-life Graham made the decision despite knowing that it could have led to legal consequences.
"I thought this was an idea that felt more like 2017 than 1971 — I could not believe the similarities between today and what happened with the Nixon administration against their avowed enemies The New York Times and The Washington Post," Spielberg told THR. "I realized this was the only year to make this film."
Hopefully, the director didn't have to ask around for an exorcist on set this time, though.
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