“I feel like the New York premiere was the one we were all looking forward to,” says Monica Barbaro. “Because once you get past the big worldwide high pressure premiere, you can enjoy the rest.”
That was the vibe for Friday night’s premiere of “A Complete Unknown,” in which she plays Joan Baez alongside Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger. After a big Los Angeles premiere, the cast brought the film to New York, where the after party was held at the Hotel Chelsea, the scene of Barbaro’s first night of filming.
“The spirit of the film was alive in that premiere,” Barbaro says.
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For the press tour, the 34-year-old is working with Dior. Friday’s look was a Dior cruise 2021 ivory lace dress that had a 1970s feel that felt evocative of folk music.
“It’s early ’70s, it’s not the same period as the film, but I feel like Bob and Joan were these musicians that had such an impact on the rest of musicians that came out in the late ’60s and early ’70s and beyond,” Barbaro says. “It felt like it was the spirit of their legacy of music, even though it’s not quite the right time period. I put it on and was like, ‘Oh my God, grab me a guitar.’”
The look was completed by a Bulgari High Jewelry Tubogas necklace in pink gold with one oval orange topaz of more than 29 carats and pavé set diamonds.
‘It was so fun too, because Elle works with Cartier and I work with Bulgari, and we’ve not been really directly coordinating, but we keep showing up to these things in either perfect contrast, or perfect coordination,” Barbaro says. “And [Friday] was the jewelry night.”
While she and Fanning were having fun with major necklaces and gowns, Chalamet had his own attention-grabbing look: channeling Dylan’s blonde moment at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.
“I did not know the reference at first. I mean, you just roll with it. And he looked great,” Barbaro says of seeing her costar for the first time in his getup. “Someone asked me about it and I was like, ‘I mean, he can pull off literally anything. So yeah, go blond.’ And then we were behind closed doors at one point and I was like, ‘So what is this? Dare I ask for an explanation?’ And then he said, ‘Bob did this at Sundance.’”
Playing Baez has “completely” changed Barbaro’s relationship with music, and has inspired her approach to the press tour.
“She just had a real authenticity about herself, and I think that’s kind of inherent within the folk music scene. They’re talking about breaking down filters and just being themselves all the time and looking at humanity in a really honest way,” Barbaro says. “With press in the past, I’ve felt like I had to sort of play a character to sort of get through it. And with this one, I feel like the authenticity of what we portrayed in this film has permeated this press process. We’re able just to talk about what it was really like to make this movie and what it’s like to honor these artists.”
