‘Nightbitch’ director Marielle Heller is taking on ‘mom culture’ and saying things parents ‘aren’t really supposed to’
Marielle Heller has something to say about “mom culture” in her new film, Nightbitch. The writer-director is finished with the facade of perfect parenting and has decided it’s time to start saying things we “aren’t really supposed to.”
“When I became a parent, I felt like nobody was really honest about saying, ‘But some days you regret it,’ or, ‘Some days you feel like you’re not sure if you made a huge mistake,'” Heller tells Gold Derby. “You’re not supposed to admit how hard it is. You’re not supposed to admit how much of the time you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing or how much of the time you feel like everyone else has it together.” Watch the full video interview above.
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Heller adapted Nightbitch from Rachel Yoder‘s 2021 novel of the same name. The film stars six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams as a woman who pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her new domesticity takes a surreal turn. Adams joined the project as a producer early in the development phase, suggesting Heller to direct.
“[Adams] is so wonderful and she’s so vulnerable, and I feel like she really trusted me,” the filmmaker says. “It’s such an intimate portrait of what it is to be an aging woman, to allow herself to be seen in certain ways. She grew out this hair coming out of a mole on her chin and let me film it. I just was blown away by her every day and how much she was willing to let us see her, and see the sometimes complicated look of being an aging woman, and being a mother, and how it’s not always pretty.”
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The film shows Adams’ character transition into a primal dog at night, hunting local prey, both wild and domestic. “I loved the idea of her being almost like a wolf-like husky with red in her coat because of Amy’s hair,” Heller recounts. “And then it turned out that wasn’t a dog that was really available from all of the trainers and everybody that I talked to. So we ended up searching rescue organizations and they found this dog and adopted her and trained her for five months for the movie and kept her. She’s the most incredible dog.”
A combination of makeup and visual effects were used to show the transformation, but Heller didn’t want it to appear painful. “It’s an exuberant, cathartic thing when she becomes a dog,” the director explains. “In the book, it feels good when she becomes a dog, she feels her muscles move, she feels more connected to her body. There’s a power in it.”
Heller reveals that being an actress (whose credits include MacGruber and The Queen’s Gambit) gives her a “superpower” when it comes to directing. “I know how difficult what I’m wanting them to do is,” she says, “and yet I’m still pushing them and asking them to do something that they’re maybe not totally comfortable with. But I think because I love actors and have a real experience and appreciation of what they do, we speak a similar language. I can kind of ask certain things to them that maybe I wouldn’t be able to ask of them otherwise.”
The experience has paid off. Her 2018 film, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, landed Oscar nominations for both Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant. In 2020, Tom Hanks earned an Academy Award nomination for playing Mr. Rogers in her film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Now, Adams is the one receiving Oscar buzz after her Golden Globe and Indie Spirit nominations for Nightbitch.
The 2025 Oscars nominations will be announced on Jan. 17.
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