The pair play country music royalty in the upcoming limited series.
George Jones and Tammy Wynette were legends of the country music world, and so when Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain signed on to play the pair in Showtime's upcoming miniseries, George & Tammy, they knew there was little room for error.
"Frank Sinatra said George Jones is the second greatest American singer of all time. And if you ask Johnny Cash who his favorite singer is he says, 'You mean besides George Jones?' So that's a lot of pressure," Shannon admitted when the pair sat down with ET's Cassie DiLaura to discuss their upcoming six-episode series. "I can sing a little bit, but I can't sing like that. At least not without some practice... I still didn't sing like him, but I got as close as I could."
The pair met in the late 1960s, when Wynette was touring with her second husband, Don Chappel, and began a tumultuous romance that would lead to an even more tumultuous marriage from 1969-75. However, their musical partnership lasted much longer, with the pair releasing nine studio albums together, and charting fourteen singles on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart, including three No. 1 hits: "We're Gonna Hold On," "Golden Ring," and "Near You."
"Their duets are some of the greatest duets I've ever heard, and what's so fascinating is to think about how many times they sang these songs together in in such different circumstances throughout their lives," Shannon noted. "They sure did love each other, so yeah, it's a beautiful story."
"They're such sweet people, both of them, and they both overcame a lot of adversity and a lot of hardship and life wasn't easy for either one of them -- before they were famous, after they were famous -- it was just never easy for either one of them," he added.
Shannon and Chastain admitted to both being nervous about taking on the performance-heavy roles. They worked with vocal coach Ron Browning to perfect their tone and twang.
"I think both of us were pretty petrified at the outset," Shannon admitted, "but he taught us a lot of things including using your nose -- which I had never even thought of for singing."
"Yeah, he kept talking about country music and the nose horn -- he would say, 'There's a reason it's in the middle of your face' -- so it was always like, trying to get the resonance in the nose," Chastain added
Shannon shared the detail that "Stand By Your Man" -- Wynette's most iconic solo track -- was the first song Chastain sang for famed music producer T-Bone Burnett when she was considering taking the role and trying to impersonate the singer's "incomparable voice."
Chastain confirmed the story, recalling, "I just said like, let's just find out if this is ridiculous. Let's start there."
"I wasn’t excited about singing that song," she continued. "In fact, when it was filmed... we didn't have a pre-recorded [track to] lip sync [to]. We had open mics and we sang and there were extras and a lot of people watching us and when you have a song like 'Stand By Your Man,' it's very stressful."
Their transformations were also aided by the help of talented hair and makeup teams, as well as dialect coach Liz Himelstein, who Chastain also worked with on her Oscar-winning role as Tammy Faye Bakker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
"Tammy Faye is this high-pitched Minnesota accent, very folksy, and Tammy Wynette, it was the lowest in my register," she shared. "My voice could sit, so there were huge differences between the two characters."
However, Shannon teased Chastain that she would sometime switch between Tammys, breaking into her Tammy Faye Bakker voice on the set of George & Tammy while having fun in between takes.
"Well I like doing the Tammy Faye voice!" Chastain retorted.
"That's your happy voice," Shannon agreed.
George & Tammy premieres Sunday, Dec. 4 at 9 p.m. PT/ET on Showtime and the Paramount Network.
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