Where did this audacious story come from?
Rose Glass: After Saint Maud – and maybe in response to its “women looking elegant in plush-curtained houses”, theatrical kind of feel – I wanted to challenge myself and do something more visceral. I’ve always enjoyed body horror and quite violent films. It wasn’t, like, a full story I’d had in my head for a long time. A lot of the writing process felt spontaneous and slightly experimental. The initial spark was wanting to tell something about a female bodybuilder because it seemed like both visually and psychologically interesting territory. I’m very obviously not a bodybuilder and probably incredibly physically frail and pathetic and weedy. So I find it impressive and fascinating, the psychology it must take to be a bodybuilder.
Why a bodybuilder instead of another kind of athlete?
Glass: I’d seen photos from the ’40s or ’50s, before bodybuilding was a competitive sport, at least for women. At that point, strong women were more of a sideshow attraction. These women had amazing ’50s pin-curl hair-dos and incredible muscular physiques, and the visual juxtaposition was intriguing to me. The more I found out about it, the more it seemed like this slightly anarchic but beautiful, strange sport, which is as much a performance art as a sport. It’s an aesthetic sport. So I wondered about the psychology it takes to do something like that, how that can either clash with or spill over into other elements of their life. And falling in love seemed like an appropriately derailing kind of chaos to throw somebody into when they’re otherwise very driven and focused.
Katy, you’ve competed in bodybuilding. Was Rose’s vision of that world accurate to you?
Katy O’Brian: At least with the people I know, there’s certainly less murder. [Laughs.] It takes focus and discipline and can be obsessive. You have a weird relationship with food, where you’re counting and weighing calories. And it can be isolating because you can’t go out and enjoy a meal with your friends – you have to stick to your routine. I’m a live-by-moderation type of person, but I know a lot of people who had liver or kidney failure.
Did you connect with Jackie on a personal level?
O’Brian: We’re both from the Midwest, and it’s still weird being a bodybuilder there. CrossFit has helped because it’s such a sensation and everybody’s getting bigger. But even recently someone there came up to me on the street and just touched my muscles. Female bodybuilding started out as a circus attraction, and I guess it still feels unnatural to some people, especially in a place that’s more conservative.
Bodybuilding is something Jackie loves, and it makes her feel safe, but a lot of people reject that – it’s more like she’s doing this freaky thing to her body. In acting, I’ve been told I’m too big for roles that are literally asking for bodybuilders or I get a butch characterisation because they don’t feel like muscles are feminine.
What were some of the film’s references?
Glass: I suggested people should watch David Cronenberg’s Crash, Showgirls, and Saturday Night Fever, and the tiny Venn-diagram crossover was the cinematic universe the film might take place in – dark, melodramatic, sexy films. I tried to avoid watching the more Americana cornerstones of Thelma & Louise and Wild at Heart until after we’d made it so I didn’t get too referential.
Why set the film in the 1980s? Could it have taken place today?
Glass: One of the main reasons for putting it in the past was wanting it to be pre-internet or pre-social media. What I liked about doing it before everyone became so connected is that it heightens the fact that both Lou and Jackie are misfits and alone. They’re both from different small towns, very isolated, and haven’t found their people because they’re not physically around them. So when the two cross paths, there’s recognition there.
The year 1989 was right before anabolic steroids became illegal, so in the film there’s a naivete to how they’re being handled. And this excess of the ’80s and more, bigger just before the ’90s, when everyone becomes more nihilistic – I thought Jackie’s the ’80s and Lou’s the ’90s, a love story between a romantic and a cynic.
Katy, you’re an accomplished martial artist, and one of the leads of True Detective: Night Country, Kali Reis, is a former pro boxer. Is there something about this moment that’s particularly primed for depictions of complex women whose physical strength is also foregrounded?
O’Brian: Hollywood has made a big push to be more supportive of female writers and directors. These aren’t things that are weird to us – a lot of women box, go to the gym, work out.
Glass: The way that both Katy and Kristen appear in this film shouldn’t be radical. There are many women who look like both these characters. How people are responding to seeing them as main characters versus how unextraordinary it is in real life – the fact that’s such a stark contrast just highlights the homogeneity that, as everyone’s well aware, has been present in films for a long time.
The film also has a real playfulness and sexiness in its depiction of desire, even amid all the menace and violence.
Glass: There’s a lot of queer films in particular, and a certain type of tasteful period lesbian film, where all the looking is done very secretly and with longing in a sense of forbiddenness. So I enjoyed that here they’re both more horny and blatant. When Lou sees Jackie across the gym, if I’m referencing anything there, it’s the bit in The Mask where Jim Carrey sees Cameron Diaz across the bank. It was fun to lean into the silliness.
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