Interview: Chasing The Gold: ‘A Complete Unknown’: Monica Barbaro on Being Joan Baez, the Icon Who Helped Bob Dylan Become Known

You might know Monica Barbaro as Phoenix from Top Gun: Maverick. The kick ass woman pilot who flies high and keeps pace with the men. Or you might have seen her as Lydia Damrosch, the mother of the protagonist Jesse in Ricky D’Ambrose’s powerful family drama The Cathedral.

In A Complete Unknown, Monica plays Joan Baez, who was on the cover of Time Magazine before Bob Dylan was recording original songs. Joan was established and revered in folk circles. A prolific performer and trained musician and composer. A defining voice in activism, feminism, the peace and social equity movements.

Monica not only inhabits Joan’s character through the years of 1961 through to 1965, but she also learned to sing and play guitar as Baez and performs all the songs in the film.

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were artistic collaborators, friends, and lovers. Baez admired and cared for Bob Dylan, but she wasn’t afraid to call him out over his behavior and tell him to grow up. In a time where many people were afraid to tell Bob he was being a jerk; Joan came out and said it.

Nadine Whitney asked Monica about how she worked on illustrating Joan’s frustration with Bob Dylan and his “burden of genius” and how she achieved the natural dynamic between herself and Timothée Chalamet who stars as Dylan.

Monica Barbaro: Well, there is at least one scene very much dedicated to that in the Chelsea Hotel with the two of us. Dylan would write into the night and just not care who it was keeping up. He had obsession for his for his music and writing and I think it was something Joan really respected a lot. But also, there’s a tipping point when it’s 3 A.M. and he needs to get out of the room and go somewhere else. 

They had such an interesting relationship that you could write books and books on it. But also, they’ve maintained a friendship. They have come together and gone apart many times in their career and always in  an incredibly creative, and enlightening way.

I think at each chapter in their careers they’ve done that. In order to get to the seeds of that, you have to show something in this film that’s really truly just like an immediate spark in connection between the two of them. I think we achieved that. There’s a lovely scene with the two of us singing and shaping “Blowing in the Wind”. That was maybe my favorite scene to work on because we got to play out that possible experience that they had behind closed doors. That push and pull between them and how much he’s really going to let her know him and how much she’s going to let him know her. What are their goals? I really think we got what we came there to do with that scene. 

Then there are the concerts where he would walk off and leave Joan alone on stage and they’re riffing. That was another funny scene to work on because Timothée made it up each time. He made up a different excuse to leave the stage every time. That was actually the first thing we shot together, and I was like, “Oh, okay, we’re definitely off script. Let’s do this!”

Our research and our work and our understanding of these two people was so full that by the time we were there shooting and riffing, what wound up in the movie felt very much like something offbeat that would happen in a folk concert. 

It was like that in a lot of the filming depending on the scene. It was fun to play out. To play with their dynamic and explore the options. I think what James Mangold chose in the end in the edit is all very nicely placed.

A Complete Unknown is directed and co-scripted by James Mangold. It stars Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan as he arrives in New York in 1961 and follows his beginnings as a Greenwich Village musician in the Gaslight Café through to his appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Convention and the recording of Highway 61 Revisited. It co-stars Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning as Sylvia Russo, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez.

It releases wide in the United States on December 25, 2024 with other territories to follow through Searchlight Pictures.