Filmmaker Unjoo Moon brings Helen Reddy’s story to life with actress Tilda Cobham-Hervey

Helen Reddy’s 1971 feminist anthem I Am Woman doubles as the title of a biopic that traces her path to superstardom.  

Tilda Cobham-Hervey dazzles as Helen Reddy in Unjoo Moon’s film I Am Woman. Picture: Tony Mott

Curiosity drove Unjoo Moon’s first encounter with Helen Reddy. It was at a Los Angeles lunch a few years ago, and Moon recognised the singer sitting at another table. There was a spare seat nearby, she went over and introduced herself, and they started to talk.

“And before dessert arrived, I learned that she had this extraordinary story that was beyond anything I knew about,” Moon says.

Her new feature, I Am Woman, a biographical portrait that takes its title from Reddy’s anthemic 1971 song, developed out of the ­encounter. “I didn’t want to sit next to her because I wanted to make a movie,” Moon says. “I just wanted to learn something about her, because I had such a strong memory of what her music meant to the older women in my life when I was a young child. I really wanted to understand that.”

When Moon went home, she googled Reddy, eager to learn more. “There was a lot of material about the days when she was a huge superstar, one of the highest-paid women in entertainment at that time” but nothing that tied it all together, she recalls.

“I stayed up all night. I went down a real rabbit hole. It was amazing to watch all those shows, Midnight Special, The Carol Burnett Show,” seeing Reddy in her prime, as a Las Vegas headliner, appearing on specials and hosting her own show, accepting a Grammy and thanking God “because She makes everything possible”. But there wasn’t a film or a series, or a documentary, to be found.

Moon is an Australian filmmaker who now lives in Los Angeles with her cinematographer husband, Dion Beebe. Her previous film, The Zen Of Bennett, was a documentary portrait of singer Tony Bennett. And for a while, she thought she might be going down the documentary path again. “But the more I dug into her life and saw the trajectory of her story, the more I realised that it would be better served as a fictional film inspired by her life,” and screenwriter Emma Jensen came on board.

In I Am Woman, our first real glimpse of Reddy is of a young woman in a smart pink suit climbing up the steps of a New York subway, holding the hand of a small child, her three-year-old daughter. It’s an image that means a lot to Moon, because it represents one of the things she finds most remarkable about her subject.

“When I first met Helen and I realised she arrived in New York with $230, or however much it was, a suitcase and a little girl, being a mother myself, I thought, ‘How on earth did she do that?’”

Helen Reddy performing in 1975.

Reddy, who was born in Melbourne, had won a contest in Australia for which the prize was represented as a recording contract. It turned out to be no such thing, but she decided to stay to try her luck, to keep working, to persevere. She was an outsider with no obvious support systems, but she broke through.

“To me it’s a really Australian story — the ultimate Australian story,” Moon says, “even though none of it is set here. Think of how many people have had that dream and that desire to reach out and do something as an artist — and she was one of the first who did it.”

Tilda Cobham-Hervey (52 Tuesdays, Hotel Mumbai) plays Reddy, and Evan Peters (American Animals, X-Men) is her husband and manager, Jeff Wald, with whom she had a complicated, often difficult relationship.

There were things Cobham-Hervey had in common with her subject, Moon says. “Helen had grown up with a vaudeville family travelling throughout Australia, Tilda’s mother was a ballet dancer, her father was a theatre lighting ­director” (and) she had travelled round the world from a young age.

Cobham-Hervey, says Moon, threw herself into preparation and research: movement and dialect coaching, watching every Reddy video she could get her hands on, learning how to breathe and to sing — even though she doesn’t sing in the film, she had to be completely convincing as a performer.

Then, working with Peters, she drew on another set of skills, Moon says. Having done the preparation, “she had to throw it all away and respond to someone like Evan, who is very much in the moment”, who created “a very alive, visceral character who we see through Helen’s eyes”.

Evan Peters plays Helen Reddy’s husband and manager Jeff Wald in I Am Woman. Picture: Stan

When it came to using Reddy’s songs — from jazz numbers to her breakthrough hit, I Don’t Know How To Love Him, to I Am Woman and beyond — “I app­roached it like a musical,” Moon says. “The placement of the songs tells you as much about her life as it does about the music.”

Reddy remains a strong presence for Moon. “When we were developing the script, Helen did a revival tour … and she did two nights in Vegas. Emma and I went with her. It was packed out and it was a great show. Her voice is still wonderful today.

“One of my favourite things about going to visit her, which I do still, is that we put on an album and she sings the songs to me.”

I Am Woman streams on Stan from August 28.