Words by Amon Warmann

From travelling the world to teaching in Korea, Amie Doherty was living a fulfilling life - albeit one that had nothing to do with music. A college lecture, however, given by fellow Irish composer Anna Rice proved to be just the spark and guidance that she needed to put her on the path to becoming a composer herself.

Several years later and Amie has an impressive list of credits that gradually increase in scale – 2019 romantic dramas The High Note and Happiest Season were followed by Spirit Untamed, which saw her become the first woman to score an animated feature from a studio. Her latest project is by far her biggest yet; the hotly anticipated Marvel / Disney+ series, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. 

Chatting from her LA apartment via Zoom, Doherty tells us about how she got Marvel’s attention and unlocked She-Hulk’s catchy theme, her musical influences, and much more.

When was the first time you took notice of film scores?

I grew up with music, and I come from a really musical family. So music was always front and centre in my brain. But in terms of film scoring, I would say the first movie that I remember the score having a really big impact on me – and I don't even know if I realised that ‘score’ was the word at the time – was a film called The Land Before Time. It was a James Horner score. For a child, it’s a pretty tear-jerking and traumatic film, but the score is so beautiful and warm. And I remember just wanting to go back to it all the time. Thinking back now, I know the score so well, and I think it had a really deep impact on me. And then when I was an early teenager, I discovered John Williams. I had known of some of his scores, but I didn't know they were all written by this one amazing man. And when I put that together, I think that's when I realised, “wait, this is a job?”

When did you start to create your own music?

After college, I went and did my undergrad in music at Trinity College in Dublin. I had grown up playing the piano and on that stage, I was on track to be a performer. I was 16-17, and I would do these concerts, but I just hated performing. And I just thought oh my god, am I supposed to feel like this forever if I want to work in music? So I went to college and decided not to perform. I ended up doing music technology, which has paid off in dividends. And a composer came to speak to us when I was in my second or third year of college. And her name is Anna Rice. She's an Irish composer, and she was working on an animated series at the time. And I think that was the first time that I kind of saw someone who had done the thing that I wanted to do. And I suddenly had this resource to pick someone’s brain as to how to put one foot in front of the other. And she was so lovely and so helpful.

We met up for years afterwards. She would check in with me. I'm so grateful to her for putting me on the right path. She's told me various workshops to apply for and whether I should think about studying film scoring or just jumping in with two feet and hoping for the best. That kind of stuff. Then I finished college and I went off and travelled the world for a few years and didn't really do anything musically. I was a kindergarten teacher in South Korea for a while, so I got that out of my system! And then I applied to Berkeley for their Master's in Film Scoring project program. So that's kind of when I jumped in professionally, and decided this is it.

Who were your musical influences growing up?

In terms of composers, there are many… James Newton Howard is a huge influence. I love Alan Silvestri’s score for Forrest Gump. Rachel Portman’s The Cider House Rules score tears my heart apart. In terms of other music, I listened to everything. I grew up in a house full of huge Beatles fans. My Mum is very into classical music. So there was always a random eclectic mix. My Dad's really into Austin country music. You'd never know what is going to be playing in our house. Growing up, I think that was a huge influence because I was just hearing all of these different sounds and subconsciously thinking what is it about this music that makes me feel this way? Is it the instrumentation? Is it harmony? Is it the tonalities? I think that's the fascinating science behind film scoring.

Talk me through the process of getting the She-Hulk gig.

It actually came up because I had sent a reel through my agent and we had pitched for another Marvel project which I didn't end up scoring. But someone on that team at Marvel heard my reel and thought oh, you know what, I think it might be right for She-Hulk. So they sent it over to the She-Hulk team, and they liked it. So we set up a call and they sent me all the scripts. I got to read them and put together some ideas just to show how I thought the score could help tell the story, and we just talked through it. Kat Coiro, who's the director of six of the nine episodes, was on the call, and I had met her a few years ago. So funnily enough, it was kind of a weird full-circle moment.

What was the key to unlocking She-Hulk’s main theme? 

The challenge was trying to come up with a theme that could be applied to both sides of her personality. The series is about how she's grappling with how to be Jen and how to be She-Hulk and how to combine that as one. So I wanted to come up with a theme that we could apply to the different sides of that. It can be treated as a big superhero theme for those big She-Hulk moments, but then can also be really small and intimate. So we’d use different instrumentation and just a smaller palette for the courtroom scenes or any of the emotional Jen scenes. 

Once we nailed that, I wrote a suite in the very beginning and we went back and forth with the team. Once that was approved it all fell into place after that, and then it was just about coming up with various kinds of new themes and new palettes for the new clientele of each episode, which is really fun.

What project has pushed you the most so far?

I did Spirit Untamed last year. It was my first big studio animated film. It was 85 minutes of music, and we had this huge orchestra. Just standing in front of that mountain at the very beginning of the project, it was kind of impossible to see the top and how I was gonna get there. But it's just putting one foot in front of another. It definitely pushed me to write quickly, trust my instincts, and just make decisions to keep things moving.

What’s the minimum amount of information you need to know that you want to work on something?

I definitely like to have as much info as I can. Sometimes I just get scripts before it's even started filming, which actually happened on She-Hulk. But in those first conversations with the filmmakers there’s a data download from their brain into my brain. I love the big long chats where we just talk about everything and I want to know their intention for the character and how they think the character is feeling. So I just want to get as much information in my head to get inside their heads, so that we're all on the same page.

Do you prefer for your music to be in the foreground and take a very active role?

I would say if the score is done well, then most people don't even notice it. A few times in any project, there will be scenes where the music is really in the foreground. But for the most part, it's there to support the dialogue, sport, action, sport, and emotion on screen. That's what I love about the job - that it's a collaborative thing. It's not about my music, it's about my music as it supports this project. 

How close do you think we are to not have to ask the “woman composer” question, and what needs to happen to speed that process along? 

I hope we're very close. Truthfully we’re probably not, but we’re getting there. I feel like in the last six years – and definitely in the last year or two – huge progress has been made. And there are so many more female composers who are at the forefront, scoring big studio projects. It’s still a very low number compared to the men, but we're getting there.

We're not going to see the results of these efforts for a few years yet, because I think a lot of it is that we need to inspire young women to want to go into this field. For some reason, society doesn't encourage women to work in tech. And I would say my job is more tech based than music based a lot of the time. Young girls have to see the role models and see someone who looks like them do it, so I think it's gonna take some time before we're at that 50/50 phase with men.

At the same time, I'm really encouraged and I think it's definitely moving in the right direction. Just look at the recent Marvel shows – before me, there was Laura Karpman who did What If...? and Ms. Marvel. Natalie Holt did Loki, and Nami Melumad co-scored Thor: Love and Thunder with Michael Giacchino. I was on a panel at Comic-Con in July with a superhero panel with Marvel composers, and it was three women and three men. So we're getting there.

You’ve previously said that working with a big orchestra at Abbey Road was your big dream. You’ve done that now. What’s the new big dream? 

I do have big goals and dreams, which I keep to myself because they are cringe! But I’ve just gotten to a point now where I just want to love what I'm doing every day. And that's the dream. And don't get me wrong, I don't love it every day. It can be very stressful. But I just try to remind myself that my life is pretty sick! I get to write music and pay the mortgage with music, and I get to interact with music all day every day for my job. Who gets to do that? That is the dream at the end of the day.