While Meryl Streep has been a rather steady guest to film festivals around the world (including two following in 2016), she has never served on the jury of any film festival. In February of 2016, she became the Berlinale International Film Festival’s jury president. During the press conference, Streep said she was proud to head the seven-member, majority-female jury which includes German actor Lars Eidinger, British film critic Nick James, French photographer Brigitte Lacombe, British actor Clive Owen, Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher and Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska. “This jury is evidence that at least women are included and in fact, dominate this jury, and that’s an unusual situation in bodies of people who make decisions,” Streep said. “I have absolutely no idea how to run a jury, but I’ve been the boss of other enterprises, my family and various other things. So I’m going to learn by doing. We’re human beings, and film is an emotional experience so we’re going to make these decisions based on what our heads want to say.”

In August, Meryl Streep delivered another star-turn in Stephen Frears’ eponymous biopic about opera singer Florence Foster Jenkins. A wealthy New York heiress, Jenkins attempted to become an opera singer in the 1940s despite her horrible singing voice. An injury in her youth deterred that dream. So she sets out to sing her way to Carnegie Hall knowing the only way to get there would be practice practice practice. Her husband supports her venture and the true story of Florence Foster Jenkins playing Carnegie Hall becomes a truly historic event. Working with director Stephen Frears was a no-brainer for Streep. “I said yes without reading the script,” she told the SAG/Aftra conversation panel in August. “Stephen Frears I always wanted to work with. He’s such a great director. We circled that possibility before over the years, but it never worked out, so it was great that he called me and said, ‘I have something for you’ and I said ‘Great. Yes. I’ll do it'”. Frears has a history of bringing strong woman characters to the screen, including Judi Dench’s “Philomena” and Helen Mirren’s Academy Award winning performance as “The Queen”, and “Florence Foster Jenkins” fits right in.

I think we all think we sound really good in the shower, where there’s that nice reverb and the water’s drowning you out and there is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it. I did hear a recording – I believe it was Irving Berlin – playing and singing along to his own music, and the piano playing was wonderful. The singing, however, was not. It was circling the notes that we knew presumably were in his head, but he wasn’t hitting the pitches. It was sort of amazing. He meandered around the pitches – and I kept thinking: But he’s such a genius, he must know what it should sound like. So maybe this was part of Florence’s inability to hear herself. Or it could be because she had physical challenges that involved tinnitus, this thing in your ear, because she was ill. Who knows? Who knows what she heard. I do know that we have delusions about ourselves and what we sound like. (Meryl Streep, NPR Fresh Air, August 10, 2016)

For the film, a massive press tour was held in the United States and internationally. After the premiere in Frears’ home town London, Streep and cast promoted the film during various conversation panels and screenings in New York and Los Angeles before traveling to Italy for the 11th Rome International Film Festival and, in October, the Tokyo Film Festival. The film was a modest box office success and embraced by critics. Anthony Lane of the New Yorker wrote, “Streep is right there, solidly invested in the folly of Florence’s dreams. When she declares that “music has been, and is, my life,” you believe her.” By the end of the year, Meryl Streep received another round of nominations for the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, BAFTA Film Award and Academy Award in the following year.