Going into Project Hail Mary, you expected to see lots of scenes featuring Ryan Gosling’s character, Ryland Grace, solving problems in a spaceship hurtling through the stars. What you may not have expected was the sight of Sandra Hüller’s Eva Stratt singing Harry Styles’ somber ballad “Sign of the Times” (and crushing it) in what turns out to be one of Project Hail Mary‘s most surprising and moving sequences. Incredibly, the karaoke performance wasn’t in the original script.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Gosling explained that he just happened to hear Hüller singing to herself and became convinced that she needed to bring that talent to the movie.
“She has this beautiful voice that I heard down the hallway one day when we were on an aircraft carrier, and I was like, ‘You can sing like that?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah.’ And I was like, ‘Can you sing in the movie?’ And she was like, ‘I don’t know,’” Gosling said.
“And I was like, ‘Please, we’re doing a karaoke scene. Please, please sing.’ She said, ‘I’ll think about it.’ So she showed up. She had picked this Harry Styles song. She came in, she smashed it, and it was a perfect song choice as well because it ends up becoming part of the trailers and the whole spirit of the movie.”
It’s also an important moment for Hüller’s character, who keeps herself reserved from her co-workers for the most part. Belting out a Harry Styles power ballad brings an emotional depth and vulnerability to Stratt that might’ve gone untapped otherwise.
There wasn’t much time between Gosling’s brain wave—which directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller thought was a fantastic idea—and the scene being shot, but Hüller told EW that she made sure to run her song choice by her daughter first.
“We had to find a song very quickly, and I found this song by Harry Styles, and I love it very much,” Hüller explained. “I asked my daughter if it’s actually cool or if it’s just me who finds it cool at almost 48. And she approved. So I asked if we could get the rights to this song, and [producer] Amy Pascal got the rights, and then we shot it the next day.”
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