Amy Adams spoke about tapping into her own experiences while shooting new film Nightbitch at its Los Angeles premiere on Thursday night.
“I had just come off of a play, so I was already working on a deficit of sleep and being very tired. I had a lot of a sense memory of being a parent and sort of the exhaustion that comes with that,” Adams told The Hollywood Reporter on the carpet of the filming experience.
“I think, with this, I just wanted to meet the character where I was, and so it was wonderful to not have to pretend to be different than I was on set,” she said. “I feel like I really was able to channel my own experiences through this.”
Adams stars in writer-director Marielle Heller‘s horror-comedy film, which follows the character known just as “Mother” as she deals with motherhood and realizes she might be turning into a dog.
Heller said she had been wanting to make a movie about motherhood for a while when she stumbled upon author Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel of the same name. “It was like she’d been staring and spying on my brain. I felt so seen by it,” the filmmaker said. “I felt like she was saying the thoughts that I had kept secret in my head out loud.”
Mary Holland, Adrienne Rose White, Amy Adams, Zoë Chao and Archana Rajan
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Heller was drawn to how Yoder told the story of motherhood. “I think there is this version of motherhood that I see in movies and TV and on Instagram or whatever that just really does a disservice to women,” she explained. “There is a lack of honesty around anything around our bodies around aging. We just do not talk. Not to mention that there’s a lack of medical attention given to women and whatever we’ve got going on with our bodies.”
The film also delves into body horror, which Mary Holland, who plays Miriam in the film, thinks will surprise viewers. “You sort of wonder how that twist, her turning into a dog, how that’s going to play out, and then getting to see it in that really… the body horror of it all,” she explained.
Adams, Heller, Anne Carey, Sue Naegle, Stacy O’Neil and Christina Oh served as producers. Nightbitch initially premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is set to hit theaters on Dec. 6.