Julianne Moore sings, styles herself like Liza Minnelli in Oscar run for 'The Debut'

Julianne Moore is the current Best Actress frontrunner for "The Debut," Jesse Eisenberg's A24 musical comedy that opens December 11 and has been wowing audiences since its Telluride premiere. A sixth Oscar nomination looks inevitable, and possibly a second win after "Still Alice" in 2015.

The film earned a rapturous reception at the Middleburg Film Festival in Virginia, where Moore greeted a reporter at the Salamander Resort with "Hello, I'm Julie." In the film she plays Mona, a sad suburban homemaker turned anxious aspiring actress in a New Jersey community theater — a role Eisenberg wrote specifically for her after they worked together on "When You Finish Saving the World" (2022).

"['The Debut'] is about this woman who has been chewed up but not spit out," said Eisenberg, quoting Mona's signature song. "I was writing something about myself as a seven-year-old in 1990, but I couldn't picture anybody else except her doing it."

How did Moore shape the role?

She told Eisenberg exactly what she wanted after finishing "Dear Evan Hansen." "I loved singing, and I would love to have another opportunity," she said. "I told him that I would love to do more comedy, and I didn't want to play some suffering mom."

Eisenberg delivered "in the most surprising and inventive way," Moore said. "He's such a specific writer. He's so incredibly empathetic. He has a compassionate worldview. He understands creativity."

The story follows Mona as she persuades overbearing community theater director Jerry (Paul Giamatti) to hire her as an untrained actress. Moore described Mona's literal, babylike way of learning: "You make a face at a baby, the baby makes a face back, but they don't have intention behind it."

What does a repeat win take?

Having won before can hurt in the Oscar race, but not if the performance is undeniable. Katharine Hepburn holds the record with four wins, with Meryl Streep, Frances McDormand, Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn at three each. Moore launched her career in 1988 on the soap opera "As the World Turns."

The eight-page scene and the Minnelli homage

Eisenberg reduced anxiety by placing the eight-page showstopper confrontation with Giamatti in the middle of the shoot and promising a teleprompter. Moore didn't need it. "He knew instinctively as a director and an actor that what scares us sometimes is just a volume of language," she said. She and Giamatti had never worked together before; she calls him "the greatest scene partner" and said the scene "felt electric with the two of us."

The shoot was fast — Eisenberg often shot one take and compressed the first two scheduled days of ensemble musical numbers into a single day. "She and Paul Giamatti are so good on take one," said Eisenberg. "It's embarrassing."

Moore designed Mona's transformation herself. Eisenberg had written that Mona electrocutes herself and cuts her hair, but not a color change. Moore dyed it dark as an homage to "the great ladies of musical theater, Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera and Patti LuPone."

Singing the centerpiece song "This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn't Spit Me Out)" was nervous-making alongside Broadway belters like Tony winner Danny Burstein. "These people have the voices of angels," Moore said. If degree of difficulty counts with Oscar voters, that advantage may be hers.