In 2013, Meryl Streep landed the leading role in the anticipated big screen adaptation of Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play” August: Osage County”, about a dysfunctional family that reunites into the familial house when their patriarch suddenly disappears. Director John Wells gathered a wonderful ensemble around Streep’s towering mother: Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, and Julianne Nicholson. But “August” faced some rather odd decisions for its marketing. While the play was praised for its dark tone, the promotion for the film was lightened up and promoted as a light Christmas comedy in the tradition of “Home for the Holidays”. The overwhelming praise of Streep’s and Roberts’ involvement led critics to believe (and criticize) the film being merely a faithful adaptation of its source but rather an Oscar vehicle for its two stars. Both Streep and Roberts received Oscar nominations for their performances, but the reviews for the film were mixed. As Liam Lacey wrote for the Globe and Mail, “Although a couple of performances here may earn Oscar nominations, by the time you’ve sat through the wreckage, you’re left with the sense that this really must have worked better onstage.

The reason I did [August] was that a very dear friend said to me, ‘You had a great mother. She gave you your appetite for experience, curiosity, sense of humor. Your mother sang in the kitchen and mine hit me. Your mother made you feel you could do anything. Mine made me feel like I couldn’t do anything. You have to do this for me and for all the girls like me who had bad mothers, who made it in spite of that, who got out, and for all the ones who didn’t and to let them know it’s OK to leave that behind.’ She really made a case. I thought, OK, because when you’re a young actor, you think, oh yeah, it’ll be so cool to imagine having cancer and what’s it like to be close to death and then your family hates you…I really want to take that all on. (Meryl Streep, “August: Osage County” press conference, October 23, 2013)

“August: Osage County” premiered at the Toronto Film Festival to rather mixed reviews, with Meryl’s performance deemed “awards bait” in almost every review. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “the moment she stumbles on screen, face pale, hair shorn, voice slurred, you can picture academy members reflexively writing her name on their Oscar ballots. This is Acting”, while the London Evening Standard called Streep’s Violet a “an all-out performance, slurring voice and twisting features, worthy of Elizabeth Taylor in her heyday, if not a nightmarish Edith Evans”.

Most of Meryl Streep’s work through this year was off-camera. She narrated a series of documentaries, such as PBS’ “Makers: Women Who Make America”, “Pioneers of THIRTEEN: The ’70’s – Bold and Fearless”, the feature films “Girl Rising” and Disney’s Wings of Life” and audiobooks of Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn” and Colm Toibin’s Booker Prize short-listed novel “The Testament of Mary”.