New documentary 'Periodical' tells the story of menstruation, from Megan Rapinoe's cycle tracking to Naomi Watts's early menopause

When Periodical director Lina Plioplyte set out to make a documentary about periods, she knew that having some star power would help. So she put together a list of the celebrities who'd ever spoken or posted about it, and she optimistically began reaching out.

"No one replied to us. Absolutely no one," Piloplyte tells Yahoo Entertainment. "So we literally tried every way... 'My childhood friend who's now their stylist'... any way possible. And it took us a year and nothing was happening. They just do not get back to you. So, like, forget it."

Then Megan Rapinoe came in for the save.

"[She] was the first one we got," Piloplyte says, "and it was a freak, lucky accident, because someone sent me an article saying the U.S. soccer team won a World Cup and had tracked their periods… And I literally just emailed the football association out of the blue, by myself... a guy gets back to me two weeks later and says, 'It's your lucky day. Come to Dallas in two weeks.' Boom. Wow. OK."

Rapinoe and her teammates had strategized to work with their cycles while training for the 2019 World Cup, which they won. They did this by, for example, "giving themselves more time to recover between workouts during the lower-energy phases," according to the New York Times. They tried to figure out if they needed more sleep or food or iron?

"We try to do every single thing that we possibly can to be the best, and I think tracking our periods was a big part of that," Rapinoe says in the doc. "Any little gain that you can have puts you in a better position to win."

She candidly explains in Periodical that her period is something that she thinks about regularly, rather than one week out of the month.

The athlete's "yes" was one of what the director considered "nods from the universe" that she received while making the movie over four years. The project began out of curiosity: the story of periods, including how they happen, how they affect our lives and, perhaps most importantly, why everyone treats it as a taboo subject.

'Who told us not to talk about it?'

"Who told us not to talk about it? Where did this start?" Piloplyte says the filmmakers asked. "And so we started peeling layers in the film, and as well as in research. And, you know, once you start poking around the internet about menstruation, I started seeing that there is a movement actually. And there are women that are pushing for menstrual rights. There are women who are running marathons, free bleeding. There is a whole conversation about menstruation online. And this was 2016."

She wanted recognizable faces like Rapinoe to ensure that the film was backed and, once it came out, seen.

"So that really opened the doors for us to have Megan and to have the soccer team's story," she says, "which is a very important story."

Celebrities including activist Gloria Steinem, Pen15 executive producer and star Anna Konkle and actress Naomi Watts eventually came on board, too.

"We got the most silence, interestingly, from celebs," Piloplyte explains of the new MSNBC Films documentary. "It was literally the 11th hour that, through my wonderful journalist friend, we got a Naomi Watts contact."

The timing was perfect for Watts, who was ready to share her story of early menopause — she began experiencing it at 36, though it often starts a decade or more later — as she launched Stripes, a beauty and wellness brand focused on menopausal symptoms.

'What makes it difficult is the suffering alone'

"I was just sick of keeping it secret," Watts, who's now 55, says in the film.

She later reveals that, early on, she had joked about having "estrogen dips" in front of her friends, in the hopes that that would prompt them to volunteer their own experiences, but they didn't.

"My friends were clearly either not there in that phase of their life or they weren't willing to talk about it," Watts adds. "What makes it difficult is the suffering alone and not knowing, waking up one day and not feeling yourself. You don't know whether that self is returning. You don't know if you're losing your mind. Suddenly the way someone turns their pages. Suddenly the way someone speaks. The perfume that they're wearing. You know, all of these things, your sensory overload is [high]. And then there's no one to talk to."

In addition to celebrities, Periodical features activists, like Anusha Singh, who are campaigning to have the so-called "tampon tax" removed in the 21 states where it remains, arguing that products needed during periods are a necessity and should be treated as such. Activists earned a victory on that front in November 2021, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill exempting tampons, pads, menstrual cups and more from the state's six percent sales tax.

Interspersed between these women's stories is information about how periods have been treated throughout history, which is, of course, dismal. In the vein of When Harry Met Sally, menstruators of all ages pop up to share their (sometimes hilarious) honest observances, wisdom and questions about periods.

It's noted that, in just the past 20 years, we had the movie Superbad, in which Jonah Hill plays a character who's disgusted when he gets period blood on him from a girl he's dancing with, and former President Donald Trump saying derisively that journalist Megyn Kelly had "blood coming out of her wherever" when she questioned his treatment of women during a presidential debate.

All of these factors — the uprising of a younger generation demanding that periods are talked about and treated differently than they have been, more women speaking out about their own experiences, a film like Periodical — seem to be leading to a world where periods are no longer a thing you dare not discuss. Take this summer, when clips of men using a period simulator — and experiencing serious pain from it — flooded the internet.

Piloplyte found that fascinating.

'Our bodies have a lot to tell us'

"Thank God it went viral," she says, because people saw it. They saw how badly those men were in pain, as it dropped them to their knees. "I think, for me, what was beautiful is we had this rare moment where we could put men in our shoes, right? And that does not happen very often."

In her next project, she plans to examine the opposite sex.

"To really apply an empathetic and curious lens on everything that's happening with men's bodies," Piloplyte says. "Also, how patriarchy is not helping men to be free... because it's telling them what kind of square box they have to be living in to be masculine enough, manly enough."

But first, she wants to make sure people first lay their eyes on Periodical, so they can better understand what's going on in their bodies.

"It's like, 'Oh, our bodies have a lot to tell us. We just never were told to listen to it," she says. "We've been told to bandage it, you know, just stick a Band-Aid on it. Take a pill, kind of ignore the pain. Put yourself on contraception instead of [thinking] like, 'What's really happening there? Can I understand it better? That takes a much longer time, and that takes time to be with it and listening to it and being more uncomfortable with it."

After all, knowledge is power.

"That's what we've been saying in the film. The more you know about yourself, the more agency you have," Piloplyte says. "And I think that's what we really need in this country today."

Periodical is currently streaming on Peacock.