“This Movie Is Like an Antidote to Instagram Culture:” ‘Nightbitch’ Director Marielle Heller on the Messiness of Motherhood

In 2021, author Rachel Yoder published her acclaimed novel Nightbitch. Yoder was lauded by audiences and critics alike, with papers such as the Washington Post praising her “powerful understanding of the alienation that can set in for stay-at-home mothers and others.” Now, her book has been adapted into a feature film directed by Marielle Heller. Known for character-driven pieces like Can You Ever Forgive Me? with Melissa McCarthy and A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, starring Tom Hanks as the seminal and beloved Mr. Rogers. Now, she brings her grounded sensibility into the world of horror-comedy and magical realism with the feature adaptation of Yoder’s novel.

Nightbitch follows six-time Academy Award nominee Amy Adams as the aptly named Mother, a woman who pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom and take care of her children. The film follows Mother as the monotony and everyday stresses build up, and she ultimately finds herself quite literally transforming. The film co-stars Scoot McNairy (Gone Girl), Jessica Harper (Suspiria), and Zoë Chao (Creature Commandos).

Heller was wonderful enough to join Collider’s Steve Weintraub for a conversation about Nightbitch. During the interview, Heller discusses Adams versatility as an actor (especially after immediately starring in Disney’s Disenchanted), the messiness of motherhood, and how the film is being received by women and men all around the country.

‘Nightbitch’ Is A Testament To Amy Adam’s Raw Talent

COLLIDER: Congrats on the movie. I could be way off on this, but I read originally this was going to be a Hulu movie, and then it went theatrical. Am I completely wrong about this?

HELLER: You’re not wrong that that’s written on the internet, but the internet is wrong.

There it is.

HELLER: Yeah, this was always the plan for the movie. The movie was delayed because of the strikes. We were gonna come out last year at Toronto, and because of the strikes we decided to hold it for a year.

One of the things about Amy Adams is I feel like she’s a cheat code in a video game because whatever she does, she’s so effing good in it. Can you talk about inserting her as a cheat code into a movie?

HELLER: I suppose that’s true. I think what Amy does in this movie is different from what we’ve seen from her, too. She had to really push herself. It’s a very vulnerable role that she does. It’s very intimate. When I think about how the movie that she filmed right before this was Disenchanted, and then she came to us to film this movie, you couldn’t have two more different roles. She’s such a multi-talented actress, singer, dancer, all of these things. So, for her to go from that to this, which couldn’t be more vulnerable and intimate and requires a rawness and an openness and an ability to be seen in all of her pain and messiness, I think it’s really a testament to how incredible she is.

I fully agree. She is such a talented actor.

Marielle Heller Talks About The Messiness Of Motherhood

“You end up really kind of returning to your animal instincts.”

It feels like people are afraid to talk about the messiness of being a parent.

HELLER: Right.

It comes up, but no one really gets in there. I’m assuming this is why you wanted to direct this.

HELLER: Yeah, I joked that this movie is like an antidote to Instagram culture, where everything is filtered and looks perfect and is clean. At least the mom version of Instagram culture is cute little snacks that you made with all of your time and all of these things you’ve been able to do. I’ve always just felt like I’m a mess, I can’t get it together, and I don’t know how to do this right. I’m always the one who would forget a diaper when I went to the park and there’s poop everywhere. There’s nothing like becoming a parent to make you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.

I guess I wanted to be really brutally honest about all of the messiness that comes along with that and how that actually kind of reduces us to this primal state, where we get more in touch with our animalness. When your logical brain gets outfoxed by a little baby, you end up really returning to your animal instincts and self. The sleep deprivation… It all brings you back to basically working on instinct. It can bring out a primal side.

I don’t have kids, but my sister does, and I’ve had very honest conversations with her.

Related

‘Nightbitch’ Review: Amy Adams Gives One of Her Most Daring and Strangest Performances

Marielle Heller’s adaptation is a wild combination of ideas that are balanced quite effectively. Oh, and Amy Adams turns into a dog.

I love talking about the editing process. How did this film change in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect going in?

HELLER: There were obviously things that were very well planned out in terms of the edit, like the hash brown montage at the beginning or the monotony of her life, which was something I wanted to try and come up with a cinematic language to really show this monotony, and how every day sort of blends into the next. You don’t really quite know what time of day it is, what day it is, if you’ve already read this book three times or if you haven’t — that was my experience of motherhood. Early days, especially. Motherhood, when you’re sleep-deprived, it’s this routine and monotony that you can’t quite get out of that feels very oppressive. As much as it’s also wonderful and joyful, it can be very, very mind-numbingly oppressive. It was about those bigger cinematic choices that I made when I wrote the script.

Then, there were other ways in which the film shifted editorially. I’ve worked with Anne McCabe now on three movies, who’s my editor, and she and I really love to reorder things. For an example, this opening scene of Amy at the grocery store was something that, for most of our edit, was more in the middle of the movie. Right at the very end, I decided to move that up to the very beginning of the movie to try starting the movie with that as almost a cold open. That unlocked something for us. We have fun. That was a surprise, I will say.

The reason I always talk about editing is that there’s so many choices you can make. You change one minute of the movie, and it’s a completely different movie. That’s the reason I’m fascinated by it.

How Are Male Audiences Reacting to ‘Nightbitch?’

So you show it to friends and family, or you do a test screening, whatever it may be. What did you learn from those early screenings that perhaps impacted the finished film?

HELLER: I guess I didn’t realize until the first test screenings that some men would find this movie confrontational. I just thought it was so funny that it was giving equal measure to both sides and that there was a lot about long-term marriage and gender roles that come up, but I didn’t really think it was in any way polarizing. There were just some reactions that were really strong for men. I was like, “Oh! Oh, you’re really mad at how this movie is portraying men. Okay. I didn’t expect that. My husband thinks it’s funny.” But overall, I was really moved by how many people just felt seen by it and felt like, “I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never seen this depiction of motherhood before. Thank you!”

For every defensive reaction of, like, “Why was the man shown like that? I don’t like that the man wasn’t the main part and that he didn’t talk as much as the woman, and I don’t like it that it seems like he did something wrong.” For every kind of defensive reaction, there were 10 women telling me how much it meant to them or how much it reminded them of their mother, or how much they felt seen by it, that they’ve never seen what it feels like depicted in such an honest way. It was fascinating, truthfully.

Nightbitch is now playing in theaters.

A woman pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her domesticity takes a surreal turn.

Runtime

98 Minutes

Distributor(s)

Searchlight Pictures

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