SPOILER ALERT: This Q&A contains spoilers for the ending of “Nightbitch,” out now in theaters.
A stream-of-consciousness novel about a stay-at-home mom who sometimes turns into a dog isn’t exactly the easiest material to adapt. One might even call it “unfilmable.” For “Nightbitch” director and writer Marielle Heller, that was exactly the appeal.
“When you read something that feels reflective of your own experience, it’s such an exuberant and meaningful experience,” she tells Variety. “It gave me more room to actually start from scratch, and write it as a film in a way that I didn’t feel as limited. Sometimes when a novel is written in a way that just feels like it is meant to be a movie, you don’t have a lot of creative freedom in it.”
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Below, Heller unpacks the film’s feminist themes and most crucial moments with Variety.
One of my favorite narrative techniques you used is the way you depict Mother’s inner thoughts, and then her snap back to reality. How did you come up with that?
One of the things I was struggling with was this idea that the mother had this internal life that was so dark and fucked up, and she was having all of these thoughts that were not what you would normally say out loud. But we were getting to hear them as a reader. I wanted to be able to show her inside thoughts, but I also knew she was struggling with this idea of feeling invisible in her life.
So early on in the writing process, I came up with this idea that she speaks and nobody can hear her. Which then led to this idea that she could speak and say something, and then almost rewind and say what she actually said out loud. She’s living in such a state of exhaustion and delirium through her years of parenting and exhaustion. Having gone through it myself, I mean it: sleep deprivation is a real thing. You hit a point where your brain is not functioning the way it normally functions. And isolation: I think we all experienced that during COVID in a way that we don’t always think about or talk about, but we really experienced a sort of shift in our consciousness and how we move through the world. I think isolation became a real kind of common experience, but new parenthood is also very isolating. I wanted to reflect how much she’s an unreliable narrator. You know that she’s somebody whose version of the world right now is not always rooted in total realism.
Speaking of the world right now – the political climate in the U.S. has certainly shifted since you started working on this film. How do you think its message is going to land with audiences post-election?
The great act of rebellion of this movie, intentional or not, is that at its core, this is a movie about women’s bodies: our aging bodies and the taboo subjects around our bodies. For most of us who live in these bodies, it’s not so taboo. It’s something we’re pretty used to talking pretty honestly with our friends about or our partners about. But in wider society, I think there is still this feeling that nobody wants to think about women in their lives pooping or menstruating or aging or getting gross or any of the things that are real. Birth is such a complicating part for women, and it’s so much more graphic than I think we ever see.
In this current moment, we have somebody who’s been elected who I think condescends towards women and doesn’t, from what I’m seeing, necessarily think of women as equal partners or equal parts of our society, but clearly sees women as second class citizens. I think [“Nightbitch”] is giving agency to women and their bodies in a way that seems important as women’s rights are being attacked. What we’re seeing in our country is forced motherhood. We are seeing a lack of health care for women, which is leading to essentially imprisonment. Nobody should have to become a mother. Even if you give up a child for adoption, nobody should have to go through birth if you don’t choose to. It is an enormous burden to put on a person and on their body and on their mental health.
This idea that this choice is being taken away from women, that people are actually making t-shirts that say, “Your body, my choice,” based on the election of this man … We’re in a moment where we have to stand up and fight for our own bodies and our rights to choose when and how we family plan. What we do with our own bodies is our own choice, and it shouldn’t be a rebellious movie. It shouldn’t be a movie that in any way challenges the status quo, but it sort of does.
I think that touches on one of the film’s most powerful scenes, when Mother tells Father that she doesn’t regret having a child, but wishes their parenting was more equitable.
That was the central question that the character is grappling with: “Do I regret this? Was this a mistake?” And so in that scene where I had him ask her straight out, “Do you regret having a child?” I wanted her to really have to think about it in that moment. That was my direction to her as an actor. Because we’re not even allowed to ask ourselves that question often as parents. That’s taboo in itself. But ultimately, her answer was, “I didn’t know what I was getting into entirely. It is not as equitable because we didn’t safeguard against it becoming inequitable.”
Society and all of these things come into play that push it into a big disparity when it comes to distribution of labor, unless you fight against it. In my own marriage, that’s what I found. We were very equitable partners before we had children. And then once we had children, this wave of biology and society comes in that pushes you guys to different sides. You have to actually consciously fight against it, to not let that happen, and that requires conversation, and that requires consciousness, and that requires more honesty about all of it. And I think a lot of couples don’t do that until it’s too late.
It’s clear that a lot of mothers will connect to this story on a deep level. How have men reacted to it so far?
I grew up reading and watching things where I was always relating to the male protagonist, because they were the ones with agency. They were the ones with ambition. They were the ones whose story we were following. You don’t relate to a tertiary character who’s in the corner, not doing anything there but looking good. You put yourself in the shoes of the person struggling and going through something and experiencing the story from a first person perspective. So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us hopefully having men step into the shoes of a woman and go, “Oh my god, this is what it would feel like. Now I get to see it. I get to feel it.”
There are some men who are defensive. I think the very idea of the story being unapologetically from a female perspective, without considering the male perspective as much as they want it to be, is offensive to them. And I did consider the male perspective! I did give [Scoot McNairy] a whole monologue that gives him his perspective, and a moment where I switch perspectives and go into his perspective – very consciously! Somebody said at a Q&A, “When do we get the story from the father’s point of view about how hard it is to be the man and going to work every day, needing to bring home the money?”
You choose to conclude the movie with Mother giving birth again. Why was that the right note to end on?
I was thinking a lot about the questions that are raised by the movie. “Did I make a mistake in becoming a mother? Have I ruined my life as an artist by becoming a mother?” I wanted to answer that actively by showing a second birth, because the thing about having your first kid is that you can’t actually imagine how hard it’s going to be. You can’t actually imagine the shift your life takes. But your second, you’re choosing to do it again, even though you know. So it’s a very conscious choice.
Even as the world is bleak, even as it is one of the hardest choices you ever make, so many of us choose to do it again. It’s this moment of faith and optimism and embracing of the messiness and the pain, and yet choosing to do it again. Choosing the love.
Birth is so primal. It’s so animalistic. You can take all this power that you realize you have within you and use it in your birth. You have to use it. Human beings walk around the world like we’re disconnected from our bodies. We’re disconnected from our animal self. When you actually go through the experience of carrying a child and birth, you have to tune into the fact that you’re not just a walking brain. You’re a body, and you’re an animal. You have instincts, and there are things that you have to listen to that are beyond your reason. It’s choosing a really difficult path that really hurts, that is sacrificing a lot of your own needs and wants for somebody else. And you wouldn’t trade it for anything. At least, I wouldn’t.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
