ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim recently spoke with director Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) for her new movie, Nightbitch. They discussed directing actors and how she executed the film’s outlandish premise.
“An artist who pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mum seeks a new chapter in her life and encounters just that, when her nightly routine takes a surreal turn and her maternal instincts begin to manifest in canine form,” reads the official synopsis.
Nightbitch arrives in theaters on December 6, 2024.
Jonathan Sim: One of my favorite things about Nightbitch is the fact that it explores a blend of horror and fantasy and dark comedy. How do you balance these elements to maintain both the emotional depth and the surreal aspects of the story?
Marielle Heller: You know, it’s funny; I don’t think any of my movies have actually really fallen into one genre or another. I really like things that sort of toe the line between funny and sad and emotional, and you know, I kind of don’t believe in, “Oh, this movie has to be a comedy,” or “This movie has to be a horror movie,” or this movie has to be this or that. Like, that’s not what life is, right? Real life is so mixed up, and I think a lot of the saddest moments in life that I’ve had are mixed with some moment of total levity and humor, and I don’t know, I just, I was hoping to make it feel more real in that way of like, it is a real mashup of all of those feelings.
This protagonist’s transformation into a dog is literal, metaphorical, and kind of a little bit of both. So, how do you work with the visual effects team and the practical elements to ensure that the transformation feels authentic and yet symbolic?
You know, for me, what was interesting when we started looking at other movies that have done transformations or thinking about how I wanted it to look or feel, most body horror transformation movies are painful. Or like somehow, you know, something protruding out, and it’s painful, and there’s like a ripping and a horrible, and I realized I wanted this to feel cathartic and exuberant and like this fulfillment of this beautiful kind of thing that came to a head in this moment. And so, how did we make this transformation? How could we make this transformation feel all of those things and be a positive transformation, not just a negative transformation?
So that kind of got unlocked when I came up with this physical idea of her digging, which just seemed to make so much sense with what was happening in the story from an emotional point of view. She’s kind of excavating her life, digging through her own childhood and her own mother, thinking through her past as an artist, and a dog loves to dig stuff up. So it kind of became this impetus for the transformation was to follow the digging.
When you’re gonna tell this story, having Amy Adams as a star is just perfect because I feel like she’s one of those actresses who I’ve always felt like she becomes the character. You know, she just vanishes. And I feel like, I mean, you’ve directed Oscar-nominated performances from people like Melissa McCarthy and Tom Hanks and Richard E. Grant. So how do you go about effectively communicating what you’re looking for with the actors that you direct?
I think the best method is to scream in their faces really loudly and just kind of slap ’em.
I think that’s good too.
No, I’m an actor, and I do think part of the reason that I have such good relationships with actors is because I am an actor and I understand when I’m asking them to do something really vulnerable or difficult, I understand what makes it vulnerable or difficult, but I still push them to kind of go to those places. I try to set up a really positive working environment for everybody on set, but particularly so that the actors feel safe. Like they can do vulnerable work and, and be, you know, kind of supported emotionally while we go to difficult places.
And, you know, we just have a shared language. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about how actors work or what they need. You know, there’s a lot of jokes about like, “what’s my motivation?” or whatever. But the truth is there is a lot of work that needs to go into building a character and understanding why or how an actor is doing the behavior that they’re doing in any given scene. So working closely with actors on their process is some of my favorite parts of the job.
