Tom Hiddleston on His Performance as Hank Williams in I Saw the Light

Even before he started dating Taylor Swift, British actor Tom Hiddleston connected to country music through his role as the legendary Hank Williams in writer director Marc Abraham’s I Saw the Light.

Based on the book Hank Williams: The Biography by Colin Escott with George Merritt and William Macewen, I Saw The Light begins when Williams is part of the Alabama music scene shortly after World War II, and follows his meteoric rise as he realizes his dream of hit records and a place on the Grand Ole Opry, as well as his turbulent personal life, and his untimely death at age 29.

Parade.com attended the press day for the movie, which has just been released on Blu-ray, DVD and digital, where Hiddleston talked about his newfound respect for country music, the tumultuous relationship between Williams and his wife Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen), the hardest Williams song he had to sing, and more.

Has doing this movie changed your perspective of country music?

What I find interesting about American country music is that essentially, as I understand it now, it’s folk music. And folk music wherever you are is an expression of the authentic soul of a country, whether that’s Scottish folk music,  Irish folk music, English folk music, or Spanish folk music. When you get under the skin of a country’s folk music, you start to understand their instinctive rhythm. And when I went to Nashville, and spent some time preparing for this, I started to understand country music is America’s folk music that comes from the blues.

The blues is so deeply engrained into the American soul. And I have a whole new appreciation for it, which has been really thrilling. Especially because Hank is right in the center of it, he’s sort of a cornerstone in the history of it. He was taught the blues, he made it his own and then people who came after him took him as an inspiration to make their own music — Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and all these people for whom Hank is the brightest star.

This film was made with an eye toward authenticity. What were the tools you accessed to bring your own creativity in the confinements of that?

The most fascinating aspect of acting is finding the common ground between yourself and the character. That becomes even more fascinating when the character is so far away from you, as Hank was for me. I did all my academic research into his life, into his circumstances, all of my physical training in terms of changing the way I looked and the way I sounded, but then at a certain point, the challenge is to commit yourself to experiencing the intensity of his emotional life — his joy, his pain, his loneliness. That is the actor’s duty, to inhabit those universal feelings through the filter of the character. That’s the fun part.

You spent time with members of Hank’s family. How did that impact your take on the role?

On the set, I met Jett Williams, who is the daughter of Hank and Bobbie Jett. There’s a scene in the film where Bobbie Jett tells Hank that she’s pregnant with his child. Jett was born four days after Hank died. Jett actually never met her father. She had a very complicated history where she didn’t actually know she was Hank’s daughter until she was quite old. I can’t remember exactly how old. I think she was in her 20s, or maybe in her teens. The day she came on set, we were shooting the scene where Fred Rose takes Hank to Hollywood to see if he wants to get into the movie game, and he doesn’t. It was a short scene, and I think Marc and Lizzie were actually shooting something so I was actually able to spend an extended lunch with Jett.

She said it was like looking at a ghost. It was very surreal for her, because I was in costume in the suit and wearing the hat. It was a couple of hours of accelerated intimacy, because I had spent months immersing myself in the life of her father, and I had already played out that scene with Wrenn Schmidt, who plays Bobbie Jett, so in my mind I had an idea of who Jett was, in my own head, because I was in character, in a way. So it was an incredibly intimate time and I was very happy to meet her.

I got a beautiful letter from her when she had seen the film. I also received a letter from Holly Williams, who is Hank Jr.’s daughter, so Hank’s granddaughter. She wrote me one of those letters you keep forever. She loved it and felt like we’d done her family proud. I remember she just said she was blown away, and her favorite scene was when Lizzie and I sing, “I Saw the Light” to the baby, who is her father, when he was 18 days old. She just loved that scene so much. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I got that email. When you get approbation and approval from the family, the family whose legacy you’re trying to protect, then that’s really all you need.

What is your musical history? Did you sing with the choir at school?

I didn’t. I sang before at school, but I was never a choirboy. I was in big chorale groups. I was never in a band. I’ve only sung on my own; I sing in the shower, basically. I never sang professionally or anything like that. This is my first time.

What was the most challenging song for you to perform? 

The most challenging song was probably “Lovesick Blues.” Of all the songs Hank sang, he probably sang that the most, because it was a huge hit for him. He once went up on stage somewhere, it’s on an album called The Lost Concerts, and he’s about to introduce it and he says (Hiddleston uses a Southern drawl as if he were Williams), “I’m going to play a little song for you. I sang this 13 million and one half times. It’s earned us quite a few beans and biscuits.” It was obviously a real hit maker for him and he sang it with such control and such authority. He really must have done it in his sleep. I had to really accelerate that process. It’s a very technically difficult song. The yodel in it, you’re jumping octaves. So to be on pitch in every note in that song was really challenging. I had days where I felt like I was bashing my head against a brick wall, because [executive music producer] Rodney Crowell and I would do take after take after take because if I was rhythmically precise, the pitch was off. If the pitch and the rhythm were right, Rodney would say, “Well you weren’t really feeling it. I lost your sincerity, I lost the twinkle, so can you put that back?” Then I’d have to twinkle and I’d go off rhythm again. That was probably the most challenging.

You’ve starred in big, blockbuster Marvel films. Do you find it refreshing to be in a film that’s based on a true story?

Are you saying The Avengers isn’t a true story? Honestly, I think the interesting thing about this question is that I think for the audience the difference is greater than for actors. Our job, our obligation and our duty is to step into characters and play them truthfully, whether that’s a Norse god of mischief, or a North American icon, and so in terms of that commitment of empathy and psychological excavation, to me there is actually no difference. I’m flexing or exercising the same dramatic muscle.

Of course, it’s different in process. We were able to go, the three of us, down to Shreveport and find real locations and inhabit those locations, without any  supplemented green screen or visual effects. So in that regard it’s different. The acting part of it, the extension of compassion and understanding, to me, is the same.

On I Saw the Light, if you wanted to have an opinion on the film, you were on the set. There’s nobody who had a creative influence on the film who wasn’t in Shreveport, in Louisiana, with us, on the day. It was the three of us and [cinematographer] Dante Spinotti and the other actors, and if you wanted to have an opinion, you had to be there. With Marvel sometimes, because you’re part of this huge universe, sometimes there are people who have hugely important opinions on the day’s work who can’t be there in person so, decisions have to go through decision making processes of approval which is canceling things down a bit.

Audrey and Hank had such a tumultuous relationship. Can you talk a little bit about getting into the mindset of this period, and having the pressure of fame and performing?

To me, the great appeal of Marc’s conjecture in the screenplay was that he was drawing together the power of Hank’s songs and the marriage of Hank and Audrey, and suggesting that the genius in his writing and the endurability of his legacy comes from that authenticity and that sincerity in those lyrics. In Marc’s mind, and in my mind, there’s no question that the authenticity of that writing comes from that relationship, largely. They were young, they were going places and they were energetic, and so, I think, they fell very deeply in love. But they were poor and they were impetuous and strong-headed and impulsive, and they were the kind of couple that fought as much as they were kind to each other.

I think Hank wouldn’t have become Hank Williams without Audrey, because she had the head for business and she kept him straight, kept him on time and introduced him to various business contacts and his managers. He wouldn’t have got to the Opry without her. At the same time, it was difficult because she wanted to share in that success. He loved her and tried to get her up there with him, but then his producers and band mates would say, “Your wife can’t sing with us,” and he would have to tell her that, and she interpreted that as a huge break in loyalty. It was obviously a very complex and difficult relationship, but it is the center of the film and it’s the center of his songwriting. They were young. It’s difficult to be young. It’s not easy. I enjoyed playing it very much. Passions run high and the freedom to commit to their passions as an actor was very exciting.