Marielle Heller and Amy Adams CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images
Amy Adams tapped into an entirely new side of herself in order to bring her latest film Nightbitch to life, according to director Marielle Heller.
“I do love that [Disenchanted] was the last role she did before this in a movie, because it just shows her incredible range,” Heller, 45, exclusively told Us Weekly at the Wednesday, November 20, red carpet premiere at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Los Angeles. “This movie required such a different muscle from her. She had to sing and dance and be so full-on in [Disenchanted], and this movie was really about shedding all artifice and being as raw and vulnerable and intimate as possible.”
The filmmaker continued, “I just think she has such an incredible range that she can do both of those things like that.”
Adams, 50, reprised her role as Giselle from Disney’s Enchanted in a sequel that hit Disney+ in 2022. Meanwhile, Nightbitch is a horror-comedy adapted from Rachel Yoder’s novel of the same name. In both the film and the book, a stay-at-home mother decides to leave her role to seek a new chapter in her life. Her nightly routine soon takes a surrealist turn as maternal instincts begin manifesting in canine form.
Related: Amy Adams Connected to the ‘Transformation’ of Her ‘Nightbitch’ Role
Searchlight Pictures Amy Adams found more of a personal connection to her Nightbitch role than fans might expect. During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly at the red carpet premiere in Los Angeles on Wednesday, November 20, Adams, 50, reflected on the most relatable aspects of filming Nightbitch, particularly as a mother. (Adams shares 14-year-old […]
Heller, who noted that her two kids likely didn’t even recognize Adams as “the same person” from the Enchanted films while watching scenes from Nightbitch, even added an array of onscreen moments that hit close to home. (Heller is married to The Lonely Island comedian Jorma Taccone, with whom she shares 9-year-old son Wylie and a 4-year-old daughter whose name hasn’t been publicly shared.)
Searchlight Pictures
“A million of these scenes are from my life. I mean, the book she reads to her son, Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site, was my book to my son,” Heller told Us. “Weird Al is our secret inside joke. The movie is just riddled with Easter eggs for my son for one day when he watches it and realizes it’s a bit of a love letter to him.”
In addition to honoring her children, Heller said that Nightbitch is also an ode to mothers and all they go through in the name of parenthood.
“There’s still such a taboo about talking about our bodies and what we actually go through, not just when we become mothers, but as we age,” Heller explained. “In the same way that you don’t want a young girl who’s getting her first period to feel like she’s going to bleed to death, you want women to understand what they’re going to go through in the course of becoming a mother. I think you can never fully tell someone, but maybe you can make it feel like less of a lonely experience if they can see that they’re not alone in all of those feelings that come up from that.”
According to Heller, “Instagram culture” has exacerbated those feelings.
“Moms really get the like, ‘Oh, you should do this, you should do that.’ People love to come up to you and be like, ‘Why doesn’t your baby have socks on? Why isn’t your baby wearing a hat?’” she added on Wednesday. “You want to be like, ‘Do you have any idea how many socks I put on these feet? And he ripped everyone off, or whatever it might be.’”
Heller went on to explain that these “shoulds” are put on mothers’ shoulders in particular, adding that husband Taccone, 47, has “never experienced that.”
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“He didn’t have people coming up and giving him their opinion about how he should be doing his parenting,” she added. “I hope that this movie makes people feel a little less lonesome in that experience and hopefully feel like I can give myself a little more grace and more of a break that we’re all doing the best we can.”
With reporting by Mariel Turner
Nightbitch premieres in theaters Friday, December 6.
