Pedro Almodóvar on Almost Making ‘Julieta’ with Meryl Streep: She’s a ‘Sublime Instrument’

If you know anything about Pedro Almodóvar‘s “Julieta,” you know that it doesn’t star Meryl Streep. That’s true of most movies, of course, but the original plan was for the three-time Oscar winner to star in the Spanish auteur’s latest, which would have been shot in English and called “Silence.” Almodóvar goes into detail on that would-be incarnation of his film in a new Hollywood Reporter interview.

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“Julieta” is based on a short-story collection by Alice Munro, hence the initial plan to shoot in English. As for Streep, the director calls her a “sublime instrument” whom he would love to work with — the two met about the project, he explains, but once he began working on the script he realized he “felt very insecure about my English. I knew that I could explain it to [Streep], and understand her easily. But there was something deeper.”

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The title role eventually went to Emma Suárez, and “Julieta” premiered at Cannes earlier this year and opens in limited release on December 21. Read Almodóvar’s full interview — which also includes his thoughts on a potential “Blade Runner” spinoff — here.

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