When Liz W. Garcia sat down to pen the script for her latest film Space Cadet, she wanted to tackle a pervasive myth that still cripples millions of women around the world; that we must ‘make something of ourselves’ by a certain age.
“I remember turning 30 and weeping, feeling like I hadn’t accomplished enough,” she tells 9honey Celebrity.
Watch the video above.
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“Now I’m in my late 40s, I think it’s absurd,” she continues.
“The idea that you should have to accomplish anything at all, other than keeping yourself alive, by age 30 is absurd.”
She devised leading lady Tiffany ‘Rex’ Simpson – played by Emma Roberts – as an antidote to that poisonous belief.
Rex is a bubbly 28-year-old who dreamed of being an astronaut but put family before her education and career, only to find herself adrift after her mother’s death.
Now she’s convinced by society and her own inner critic that her chance to make her dream happen is long gone.
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“Women tend to be very hard on themselves about having it all together and having it look a certain way by a certain time,” Garcia says.
“I’ve watched people of many different ages tell themselves that it’s too late for them to pursue their dream, but the fact is Rex is 28 and it’s not too late.”
Approaching her 30s, Rex gets the chance of a lifetime when she lands a spot in a NASA space program alongside other aspiring astronauts.
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She’s not the only woman, but Rex is set apart by her quirky personality, colourful outfits and bullet-proof positivity, all brilliantly portrayed by Emma Roberts.
These are traits we don’t often see celebrated in films or TV set in male-dominated STEM industries like space exploration and that was a deliberate move on Garcia’s part.
“There’s pressure on women to often act like men in order to be taken seriously,” she says.
“I absolutely wanted to challenge the idea that intelligence looks a certain way, that leadership looks a certain way, and that having gravitas should look a certain way.”
Garcia took inspiration from iconic 2001 flick Legally Blonde while writing and directing Space Cadet, mirroring the arc of a woman succeeding in a traditionally male field without having to give up her femininity in the process.
“That movie is not Elle Woods realising she needs to stop wearing pink, she needs to stop talking about socialising and boys,” Garcia explains.
“Elle Woods shows everyone else that she already has everything inside her to accomplish whatever she wants and that’s what I wanted to do here.
“[I wanted] to take someone whose characteristics were the opposite of what you expect from a serious, accomplished person and show that, in fact, they were exactly the characteristics that were going to make her excel in this really high-stakes, competitive environment.”
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Garcia has personal experience with the pressure on women to adopt more masculine traits in order to be accepted and respected in the workplace.
She recently confessed to 9honey that even with multiple writing and directing credits under her belt, she’s “still self conscious about being a female director” sometimes.
Read the full interview about how she found her stride as a woman in Hollywood here.
SPACE CADET will premiere globally on Prime Video July 4, 2024.
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