Maggie Gyllenhaal showed off her musical talent in a segment on The Tonight Show. The clip, dubbed “Random Instrument Challenge,” saw the actress and director attempting to perform “Sweet Home Alabama” on a lap steel guitar.
The recurring segment featured Gyllenhaal and host Jimmy Fallon playing randomly generated songs on random instruments while the Roots attempted to guess the tune. Fallon kicked things off with Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely?” as played on a train whistle, while Gyllenhaal performed Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” on a washtub. Gyllenhaal’s rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama” was, unfortunately, not successful.
The actress also sat down with Fallon to discuss her recent directorial debut The Lost Daughter, out now on Netflix. An adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same title, The Lost Daughter stars Olivia Colman as Leda, an impulsive and haunted loner who fixates on a young mother and daughter while on a seaside vacation. Dakota Johnson and Jessie Buckley also star.
The Lost Daughter has been praised for its truthful depiction of motherhood, which the director said she appreciates.
“We’re used to seeing either a fantasy version of the mother that we all wish we had or the mother that we wish we were, or, like, a bad mommy,” Gyllenhaal told Fallon. “And the thing that that does is it makes you go, ‘Oh, look at that crazy bad mommy.’ I’m nothing like that, thank God. I’m such a good momma. But to join them together, which is what this movie does, where it’s complicated.”