On October 21, 2009, Liz Myrick took her daughter, Vivie, to a concert at FedExForum.
“We went to see Miley Cyrus before Miley was on the wrecking ball,” Liz Myrick, 47, said. “And when I came out, Vivie said to me very firmly, ‘Mother, you will come to see me when I am. playing here one day. With her little 6-year-old, she looked at me and said it, and she meant it with every ounce of her being.”
Vivie Myrick has not been booked to headline a concert at FedExForum — yet.
However, the Memphis singer/actress is poised to make a big splash in December with a key supporting role in “George & Tammy,” a six-episode Showtime miniseries starring Michael Shannon and this year’s best actress Oscar winner, Jessica. Chastain as George Jones and Tammy Wynette, country music superstars whose tumultuous marriage was as dramatic as their song lyrics.
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Myrick — just 17 when she began filming the series — plays Wynette’s stepdaughter and longtime backup singer Donna Chapel, the daughter of Don Chapel, Wynette’s husband before hooking up with “The Possum” , George Jones. The role will introduce audiences to not only Myrick the actress, but Myrick the singer as well: Under the supervision of famed music producer T Bone Burnett, she joined Chastain at East Iris Studios in Nashville for re-recordings of such 1960s Wynette classics as “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” and “Apartment no. 9”.
The Dec. 4 debut of the first episode of “George & Tammy” will put an exclamation point on what was a — dare we say it? — supercalifragilisticexpialidocious year for a young woman whose talent and determination had made her a fixture in local independent shorts and on the Memphis stage (at age 14, she had the lead role in a youth production of “Mary Poppins”).
On the set of “George & Tammy”
With her dyed brunette blonde hair, Myrick worked on “George & Tammy” from December 2021 to spring 2022, a timeline full of milestones for showrunners. On December 24, Myrick turned 18; and on March 27, Chastain and “George & Tammy” makeup and hair artist Linda Dowds won Oscars for their collaboration on a biopic about another Tammy, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” (“We all said, ‘We want to see what it looks like!'” But only Dowds brought him the Oscar on set, Myrick said.)
The production schedule was exciting and intense. Monday through Wednesday, Myrick attended classes at her high school, Delta Experimental School in Wilson, Arkansas; On Thursday, he flew to Wilmington, North Carolina, where the production of “George & Tammy” took place; On Sunday, she was flying back home to Arkansas. “Basically for my whole senior year I did that,” she said.
The schedule was stressful, but Myrick loved every minute of it, she says — in part because being thrown into the crucible of her first professional screen production was an invaluable learning experience for a performer/creator planning a career in entertainment.
The experience was also an eye-opening introduction to the world of big-budget movies.
“I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I went on set and I literally had a big personal trailer with a refrigerator and a sofa bed in it,” she said. “And everyone was so nice. You expect people to be nice, but you never know.
“My scenes were basically with Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon,” she said. “Jessica and I worked together the most, so we got really close.” As for the intimidating-looking, 6-foot-3 Shannon (who was a pretty scary king of rock ‘n’ roll in 2016’s “Elvis & Nixon”), “I was kind of scared of him,” a said Myrick. “But when we first met, he started playing pranks on me.”
Before long, Myrick said, Shannon had become something of a personal acting coach, working on set with her to help her improve her “improv” skills. She said she also connected with series creator/writer Abe Sylvia and director John Hillcoat (the Australian whose filmography includes the 2009 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road).
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“I’ve always been a doer”
Born in Memphis (parents Liz and Chris Myrick are both nurses), Vivie Myrick grew up in Midtown with her brother, Carson (now in the Navy). A new job at a hospital in Crittenden County took the family to Marion, Arkansas, when Vivie was about 9, but their supportive Mrs. Myrick—in a play about “the manager,” Vivie calls her mother “her mother”— continued to chauffeur her. hardworking and energetic daughter across the river for activities in Memphis, including roles in the musicals Theater Memphis and Playhouse on the Square.
Vivie Myrick has appeared in shows such as “Cats,” “Legally Blonde,” and “Million Dollar Quartet.” A true band, she was happy whether she was front and center or in the chorus. During the production of “Shrek The Musical” at the DeSoto Family Theater in Southaven, “I was a tap-dancing rat,” she said.
Meanwhile, her mother enrolled Vivie in voice lessons with Bob Westbrook, the Memphis voice coach whose students included local child-turned-stars like Justin Timberlake, Olivia Holt and Lucy Hale. (Westbrook, 72, died in 2020.)
“There was never a time I can remember when I wasn’t singing,” said Vivie Myrick.
“She has so much tenacity and self-belief,” said Liz Myrick.
“I’ve always been a doer,” Vivie said. “I find something and I just do it. I’ve never been a procrastinator.”
In Memphis, Myrick applied that “maker” ethos to the film. She wrote, produced, directed and starred in a 17-minute short film titled “Amprints,” which won the Audience Award in August at the Indie Memphis Youth Film Fest at the Halloran Centre. A “dark” story about “a girl who finds herself in an abusive situation,” the film reflects what Myrick says is her newfound interest in telling “meaningful” stories rather than simply escapist ones. (Not that she’s against fun movies: She stars as Graham Brewer’s prom date in “Prom Works Out,” a comical but poignant short that Brewer — son of filmmaker Craig Brewer — made for the Memphis Youth Indie Festival in 2019.)
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From Arkansas to New York
In October 2021, Myrick, at the suggestion of her Memphis agent Lisa Lax, submitted a video audition for “George & Tammy”. It wasn’t the first time he’d auditioned for a major project, so Myrick’s hopes weren’t high. “The likelihood of you getting it is so low that you send it and then you let it go,” Myrick said.
For her audition tape, she performed “Here You Come Again,” a No. 1 country hit. 1 from 1977 by Dolly Parton. Obviously, the producers liked what they saw.
“Within a month, I was ready for the show,” she said. “It was like a snap of the fingers, and then we started the process.”
Myrick said show creator Abe Sylvia apparently responded to her authentic southern sunshine. “I think what he liked about me was that I was very laughable and friendly. My personality is quite big and I’m quite a fun person to talk to.”
Myrick graduated from Delta School in May, then moved to New York in August to better pursue his entertainment ambitions. “I wanted to have the opportunity to live on my own and grow up a lot, because living in New York is a crazy jump from living with your parents in Arkansas.”
She now lives in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, but returned home to Arkansas for the holidays — and for the debut of “George & Tammy,” with the accompanying hola.
November 21, Myrick flew to the premiere screening of the first episode in Los Angeles, on the red carpet. A week later, it was time for the premiere in New York.
But she doesn’t ignore her hometown. On Sunday, Dec. 4, he will be attending a free public viewing party for the debut episode at Black Lodge, the video rental/film screening/live entertainment venue at 405 N. Cleveland.
The show will air at 8:00 PM (Memphis time) on both the Showtime and Paramount channels. Subsequent episodes will air on Sunday evenings (including Christmas and New Year) until January 8.
For Myrick, the premiere is a step in what has been a journey of a lifetime. “For me it’s like, if I have this talent, I want to use it,” she said.
When a woman has that much enthusiasm, Liz Myrick asked, “How can you tell her, ‘You need to get into accounting’?”