“As long as I can remember, I’ve been in pain,” Tammy Wynette slurs into a microphone in the fifth episode of George & Tammy. The country music icon, played here by Jessica Chastain, isn’t performing one of her more melancholic hits, but delivering an impromptu speech at her wedding to her fourth and final husband, songwriter George Richey (Steve Zahn)—hunched over and high on painkillers.
By the time this line is uttered in the penultimate episode of the Showtime miniseries, it feels cathartic. As the title suggests, the bulk of George & Tammy, premiering on Sunday, focuses on the tumultuous six-year marriage between the “Stand By Your Man” singer and her third husband, the country artist George Jones, played by Michael Shannon.
Wynette experiences physical and emotional pain at the hands of Jones, who suffers from alcoholism. Richey, who eventually becomes her manager, also turns out to be an abusive partner. In the second episode, we see a flashback of Wynette receiving electric shock treatment while pregnant after being diagnosed with depression during her first marriage. Later on in the series, while giving birth to her and Jones’ daughter Georgette, she’s given a hysterectomy without her consent, causing chronic abdominal pain that would lead to her drug abuse and her eventual death at age 55 from a blood clot.
It goes without saying that Wynette is one of country music’s most tragic figures. One could even craft a version of Blonde about the Mississippi native, given the amount of suffering she dealt with at the hands of the men in her life (husbands, doctors, industry professionals, etc.). And yet, George & Tammy doesn’t feel like a formulaic exercise in “empathy tourism” or something more grotesque. Nor does it feel like Wynette’s victimization is used as some sort of shorthand for her genius or personal depth.
Michael Shannon as George Jones and Jessica Chastain as Tammy Wynette in George & Tammy, “Stand By Your Man”.
Dana Hawley/Courtesy of SHOWTIMEMaybe it’s because Wynette isn’t the sole focus of the show—though she assumes a slightly more prominent role than Jones—or that a general audience may not be familiar with the facts of her life that George & Tammy isn’t designed to redeem a particular person or recontextualize history. Rather, it’s a thoughtful, slow-burning depiction of the darkest elements that defined the country star lifestyle in the 1960s and ’70s embodied by two talented but utterly broken people.
Jones and Wynette’s uneasy love story begins as abruptly as the violence and outside pressures that eventually corrupted it. In the first episode, we’re introduced to Wynette as she emerges onto the Nashville music scene with her first minorly successful single, “Apartment No. 9,” alongside her husband and musical partner Don Chapel (Pat Healy). We also meet Jones, a certified hitmaker at this point, drunkenly flushing cash down a toilet backstage at a show. The three frequently cross paths and eventually form a friendship that turns into a heated love triangle. When the couple invite Jones to a family dinner, tensions rise to the surface; Jones and Wynette later profess their love for each other and flee with her three daughters in tow.
What unfolds over the next few years is a familiar tragedy akin to films chronicling the rise and fall of coupled rockstars, like A Star Is Born, What’s Love Got To Do With It?, and Walk The Line. With the help of Wynette’s growing star power, Jones is able to revitalize his dwindling career and replenish his pockets. We watch the pair perform (quite well, I might add) some of their famous duets, including “We Go Together,” to adoring crowds, while Wynette continues to establish herself as a formidable solo act.
Jessica Chastain as Tammy Wynette and Michael Shannon as George Jones in George & Tammy.
Dana Hawley/Courtesy of SHOWTIMEBut it isn’t long before the idea of monetizing their marriage brings out a level of discomfort, insecurity, and ultimately rage in Jones (the root of his obvious depression isn’t interrogated much beyond that). And his drinking habits reach a frightening apex that lands him in rehab, tied up in a straight jacket.
This is where the popular, if not erroneous image of Wynette as a dutiful, submissive wife—thanks in large part to her controversial signature song, “Stand By Your Man”—comes into play. This is a notion that Wynette later publicly rejected, most famously when Hillary Clinton slighted her in a 1992 interview in response to her husband’s rumored infidelity. Likewise, the show offers Wynette a complexity regarding her approach to the men in her life that’s often flattened in readings of her music. Chastain plays Wynette with a hard edge, revealing an understanding of Southern masculinity and the ways to navigate it, as opposed to a deference to it.
After watching the series, one could argue that George & Tammy serves Chastain and Shannon as performers more than the figures being portrayed—though not at their expense. The two previously played husband and wife in Jeff Nichols’ 2011 apocalyptic film Take Shelter. More than a decade later, George & Tammy finds Chastain and Shannon perfecting the cinematic archetypes they’ve spent the majority of their illustrious careers perfecting. Once again, Shannon is an unraveling menace, as full of intensity as he is pathos (though the show is careful not to excuse or rationalize Jones’ behavior). And like her Oscar-winning portrayal of Tammy Faye Bakker last year, Chastain deconstructs the layers of yet another larger-than-life woman, interrogating gender and power along the way.
When sharing a scene together, their chemistry is both electrifying and devastating. One of the best moments in the entire series is the flirty banter between Wynette and Jones the first time they’re alone, when Wynette, a former hairdresser, gives him a haircut over a bathroom sink. Despite the fact that nothing particularly intimate takes place, it feels like we shouldn’t have access to them in this moment. The scenes where that charming facade is broken are just as visceral.
Jessica Chastain as Tammy Wynette in George & Tammy, performing “We’re Gonna Hold On”.
Dana Hawley/Courtesy of SHOWTIMEGeorge & Tammy begins to lose its steam during the last two episodes, following the dissolution of Jones and Wynette’s marriage, as director John Hillcoat and the show’s writers don’t capture the latter parts of their careers with as much curiosity or enthusiasm as the earlier stages. And Wynette’s experience as an artist suffering from chronic pain feels like it should take up a little more space than it does on screen.
Additionally, the series, which is adapted from Georgette Jones’ memoir The Three Of Us: Growing Up With Tammy and George, attempts to shoehorn their only daughter’s perspective into the end of the series in an awkward, ham-fisted way. It makes you curious why the series wasn’t just adapted from Jones’ or Wynette’s own autobiographies.
When this project was first announced, I was initially disappointed that the story told by these particular actors would be confined to yet another prestige (and easily discarded) docudrama as opposed to a theatrically released film. However, the more you watch Chastain and Shannon in action, the more time you want to spend with them; perhaps a relationship as complicated and storied as Jones and Wynette’s is more ripe for this kind of multi-episode saga than a two-hour feature.
Despite its occasional flaws, George & Tammy manages to reinvigorate a worn-out type of love story and the musical biopic. It’s a surprising and delightful feat in our current landfill of miniseries about real-life events, anchored by two electric performances.
