At 45, the Australian singer seems more unleashed than ever. We won’t see him by Zoom or Teams. The one who said “fuck” to the celebrity while hiding her face behind a two-tone Cruella wig prefers to talk to us on the phone. His zest for life is measured by his explosive laughter which must shake the walls of his Los Angeles home. Following her divorce in 2016 from director Erik Anders Lang – two years after their marriage – the pop star had spent “three or four years” in bed, drowning in abysmal grief while watching TV from the ceiling (due to a stiff neck. ) with his three dogs, Lick-Lick, Pantera and Cereal. But to hell with depression and long live a busy news: the star made his first film, “Music” *, shot a while ago, and released on February 12 a hits album ** containing songs from the soundtrack but also titles inspired by the film.
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Sia co-wrote the screenplay for “Music” with her best friend, Dallas Clayton. And reserved the main role for his alter ego, his mini-me, the young prodigy who danced in his music video “Chandelier” and in most of his other videos, Maddie Ziegler. In this touching story, embellished with musical numbers choreographed by Ryan Heffington, the actress, 14 years old at the time of filming, plays a young autistic girl known as “non-verbal”. When her grandmother dies, she is taken care of by her rebellious half-sister, ex-alcoholic and ex-drug addict, played by Kate Hudson. Sia herself plays a pop star role there. “Katy Perry was supposed to play it, but at the last moment, she apologized. I sent the script to Beyoncé but no response. So, I had to stick to it since I am, it seems, a pop star! I played it as horny as possible, ”she laughs. Inspired by 90s films like “Forrest Gump” or “Gilbert Grape”, Sia put all her heart into this project that she had carried for fifteen years, braving a feeling of stubborn imposture that whispered to her that she was not legitimate as a director. “I had already co-directed several of my videos, including ‘Chandelier’, but I could have been just a singer with good ideas,” she confides. It was only when I had the support of Vincent Landay, who produced “Her” or “In the skin of John Malkovich”, that I was able to get started. “
Pursued by a curse
Her main character was inspired by a young autistic crossover at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, which she attended to cure her addiction. “He was the son of a sign language translator. One day, depressed, she cried out: “But what will become of me if I disappear?”. And I had one of the knots in my story. “By showing a teenage girl with autism spectrum disorder, Sia first had the ambition to reveal a reality rarely shown in cinema since” Rain Man “. “I have done a lot of research on autism watching movies, documentaries, reading books. Nonverbal autistics fully understand everything they are told and can learn to communicate using tablets. It is horrible to think that some older autistic families have not had access to this recent information and are speaking in their presence as if they are not there, without recognizing or respecting them. I hope that my film, which has been validated by an association of families of patients, will help to circulate this information. »She regrets only one thing: having had to cut his film – initially of 2:40 – and pass by the trap of the characters embodied by true” neuroatypics “. However, despite laudable intentions, the controversy raged on Twitter as soon as the trailer aired last November, people with autism criticizing him for not having taken a genuine patient to play Music. “It hit me and I responded to it in spite of myself a little nastily, which I regret,” Sia explains. But I was furious that my film was judged on a one-minute clip. “
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Saved by Prozac, the unfiltered pop star has never hidden his past addictions (alcohol, Xanax, Oxycontin) and his two suicide attempts, or even bipolar and post-traumatic stress syndromes making his mental health fragile. “Music” is thus the opportunity to stage one of his theories: in life, when you are gifted, you are often cursed. “My heroine has autism, but she also has an unbridled imagination which allows her to take refuge in a musical world”, she underlines. “I wrote a lot of hits myself, but I’m also being chased by a curse. The proof, I am single! »Sia blasts with a thunderous burst of laughter.
Because his life is far from being a long quiet river. Born in Adelaide, in a family of artists, Sia Furler was 10 years old when her parents separated. She is good at singing and dancing, but dreams of becoming an actress. At 17, she took her first steps on stage, singing for an acid-jazz group called Crisp. Then, admitted to the National Institute of Dramatic Art, she leaves everything to travel. “I wanted to go on an adventure,” she says. However, the adventure turns into a nightmare when she visits London with her first love, who dies hit by a taxi on her twenty-fourth birthday. She drowned her sorrows in shots of vodka and recorded two albums with poor sales before being fired from her label. But one of his tracks, “Breathe Me”, is chosen to accompany the final sequence of the series “Six Feet Under”. It’s the start of fame… with a headline written One Day Attempted Suicide – swallowing twenty-two Valiums and a bottle of vodka. Despite the relative success of her next two albums, Sia made a second suicide attempt, only saved this time by a phone call from a friend who wanted to hear from her. 2010 will be his annus horribilis. In her film, she stages an incredible anecdote linked to this period: “There was an earthquake in Haiti and I wanted to help the population who needed medicine,” she says. So I went around to my sick friends asking for painkillers, and as I didn’t have enough, I got a dealer’s number. It was the first time I called one! He supplied me with Oxycontin and we stuffed a plane belonging to the Church of Scientology – via a Scientologist friend of mine – to Haiti with drugs. And one thing leading to another, by dint of calling the dealer back, I became addicted for several months. “
The rest, we know it: the hundred songs composed by Sia for pop stars like Rihanna (“Diamonds”, written in fourteen minutes), Beyoncé, Britney Spears or David Guetta, the worldwide success of the clip of “Chandelier”, seen more than two billion times on YouTube, the rise of the Australian “hitmaker” to the status of hidden icon of pop. What is less known is that Sia recently adopted two young African-American adults, spotted while watching a documentary devoted to children in care. Now a grandmother (one of her sons had two children), the singer, who has already written two other films and an album, is preparing with her co-screenwriter a series on her own life. “Because it looks like a historical reconstruction of the bizarre,” she concludes. We want to believe her.
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* “MUSIC” (1 h 47), awaiting theatrical release or VOD (distribution: Originals Factory).
** « MUSIC. SONGS FROM AND INSPIRED BY THE MOTION PICTURE » (Warner).
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