\n\tNow that the film has released to streaming on HBO Max<\/a>, how does Victor envision the story\u2019s reception with a larger audience online? \u201cI\u2019m really happy that now people get to watch the movie in their bed with their cat,\u201d the filmmaker says. \u201cMy directive to people would be, now you can curl up, it\u2019s not at the movie theater, so the pressure is off. Just turn on the movie, bring your best friend, bring a snack and let\u2019s lock in.\u201d\u00a0Since the film\u2019s critically praised debut at the Sundance<\/a> Film Festival earlier this year, Sorry, Baby has also garnered two nominations for Best Feature and Best Original Screenplay at the Gotham Awards<\/a>. <\/p>\n \n\tBelow, Deadline speaks to Victor about their directorial debut, building a loving friendship and getting through the unspeakable hardships that life can throw at you.<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: This story is loosely based on something that happened in your life?\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEVA VICTOR: It\u2019s a very personal story. I\u2019ll say that.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tSorry, Baby<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA24<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: How did you manage to give up these vulnerable parts of yourself to tell this story? Because it\u2019s incredibly visceral. How did you get to a place where you felt comfortable putting this out into the world?\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: A lot of the film was so vulnerable because when I was writing it, I never thought the film would get made when I was making it. So, I didn\u2019t really consider what it was like to premiere a film or how exposing it would be. So much of my experience was based on wanting to make the most truthful film possible. I wasn\u2019t really aware or concerned with what would happen afterward, which has been really interesting because I think in order to write the film, that was very much an experience of wanting to process something, and also wanting only to write it once I had enough distance from the experience to see it in the most empathetic way possible towards myself.<\/p>\n \n\tI feel like there was a lot of work to do to figure out how to find empathy for this character, who isn\u2019t me but is built around me. And that took time to figure out how to tell the story as efficiently as possible, and I think, honestly, the story itself came from a desire to see something on screen and to feel something when I was watching something on screen that I couldn\u2019t find. And that was really about wanting to talk about the aftermath of something and not finding a film about that, but instead finding films about violence, which are totally valid. I just couldn\u2019t find the specific thing I wanted. So much of life after trauma is about processing healing, which is a lifelong thing. There\u2019s really no destination. There are milestones, but it\u2019s not like you land and then forget that nothing was ever done.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut the film is also about a very life-saving friendship, and I was lucky enough to have that support from a friend, and a great motivator for making the film as truthfully as possible. It was great to honor that friend and to make the film feel like a love letter to friendship and a friend\u2019s love, trust and help.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: Has it been an adjustment for your career, considering that before this, you were mostly known for your funny videos online? Now you\u2019re known for this very serious, poignant story.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: Yeah, when you\u2019re a person making videos on Twitter, no one wants you to make a movie. It\u2019s just not what they ask of you. They want something different. And it took me writing the scripts to be like, \u201cThis is what I want to make.\u201d The scripts kind of had to speak for that transition for me. The script had to be strong enough. I had to have a vision of what I wanted to do and understand what I wanted to do. It\u2019s a really weird thing to have those quirky online videos that people saw of me lead me to having some seriously real jobs. I was on a TV show because of it, and got to be on set in a professional way for the first time because of it. And that taught me so much about sets, what a collaboration looks like and building a character.<\/p>\n \n\tAlso, I think when you want to make a big transition in how people see you, you kind of have to bang the door down and make something, and it kind of felt like the task was right, something that had to be made that was perceived as undeniable so that the script forced them to take me seriously versus asking for it and then writing it. You know what I mean? No one is going to say yes to an idea; they\u2019re going to say yes to the thing that exists. So [getting the script together] felt like the task at hand to get people to jump with me.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tSorry, Baby<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA24<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: Was there a scene that resonated with you after seeing the completed film that, perhaps, while filming, you didn\u2019t think would translate well on screen?<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: There were many things. I was really convinced that I wanted the drive home after Agnes goes into the professor\u2019s house, including the walk back to the car and drive home, to be one shot. We could only be at that location for one night, and it included everything outside the professor\u2019s house, outside the school, and the drive home. We did end up getting it, but every time [we filmed] there was something I didn\u2019t like about it. Then I got to the edit and realized that\u2019s one of the parts that I think functions the most efficiently in the film. There are other things I was convinced I would die holding onto in the film that aren\u2019t there. But that\u2019s the beauty of the edit: it becomes its own. The film starts to speak for itself, and you just have to humble yourself to it and say, \u201cThis was my best guess of what I thought the film needed and that was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: In talking more about omissions, you don\u2019t show the assault, just the aftermath. Which I think is a more powerful approach, as the audience has to grapple with the silence of Agnes\u2019 walk to her car and her drive home.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: There was a big debate about that part where a kid tells Agnes that her shoes are untied. In the script, she responded, \u201cThanks.\u201d But we cut that. A lot of people watching it were like, \u201cWhy does he say that?\u201d And most of the women in the audience were like, \u201cYeah, guys are always telling you your shoes are untied, when you obviously know.\u201d No one doesn\u2019t know that their shoes are untied. And, I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s a good enough reason to keep it in.\u201d\u00a0 People are really living in different worlds.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: Agnes also makes the decision not to track her attacker down or be more aggressive in her pursuit to see that he is arrested for his crime. We don\u2019t even see the professor again in the film after the assault. Why were these things important for the story you wanted to tell?\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: The film is so not about him, which I really like. I wrote the film with the intention to never go inside the house. The absence of that scene was a huge motivator for making the film because I really wanted to prove to myself that a film doesn\u2019t have to put its audience through that kind of violence in order to be emotionally moving. My question was: is it possible to put one into a subjective experience by not showing it more than if you did show it? Because my question was, does an audience member\u2019s body, depending on what they\u2019ve been through, shut down upon seeing a scene like that and then not be open to the film? Is there a way for the film to hold an audience member through the violence instead of shocking them with it, and to meet them on the other side with an open heart? So that was the reason I wanted that to be there. That was the morality of it for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd beyond that, I think it mattered to me that we hear what happened to Agnes on her own terms. When she\u2019s ready to say it, when she\u2019s feeling safe, we don\u2019t know what happened to her before she knows, because that felt cruel. It felt condescending to be like, \u201cWe know this happened, and we\u2019re just waiting for you to catch up.\u201d I never wanted the film to be ahead of her in that way. I also think of it as Agnes\u2019 body going into that house, but her spirit doesn\u2019t. There\u2019s something about staying outside the house, for me, that feels apt in conversation with the trauma response of freezing, and potentially her memory of that experience could be just that frame. So that\u2019s why it was important for me to do that. Then, how we shot the whole walk and drive home was meant to give her some privacy. The darkness was about not showing her face as she\u2019s processing, we only see her face until she\u2019s in the safety of Lydie\u2019s company.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAgnes does what she feels is right to her [in handling this experience]. The first thing she does is go to the doctor, which is a really difficult, demoralizing and devastating experience. She does report it, but the school is not helpful, and she\u2019s met with some gaslighting and cruelty. What\u2019s so demoralizing is that she thinks of that idea for justice for one 20-minute period, burning his office down, and then she quickly realizes that that\u2019s not what justice is.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tI wasn\u2019t interested in telling a legal story. I was much more interested in sharing the part of the experience that feels so unjust and so lonely, and in connecting with the emotionality of days bleeding into each other, and in how time moves very slowly after a trauma when everyone else moves on. This wasn\u2019t meant to be a procedural thing where she\u2019s looking for justice through the legal system, because the legal system has always failed people who\u2019ve been through this kind of thing. There\u2019s a line where she says, \u201cI don\u2019t want him to go to jail because he\u2019d just be someone who goes to jail who does that. I want him to stop being someone who does that.\u201d And I really believe that.<\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019ve always felt like rehabilitation would be the most comforting justice possible in this situation, and that\u2019s not what we\u2019re set up to provide people with. So, I felt like the legal system failing, and then not being a big part of the story felt more true to reality.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tSorry, Baby<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA24<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: The friendship dynamic between Agnes and Lydie feels so lived in. Talk more about their partnership and working with Naomi Ackie.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: I do think I was completely head over heels for Naomi the entire time we were filming. I just couldn\u2019t handle her. I thought she was so fucking good and so thoughtful, and she really radiates this psychotically powerful energy of warmth, and she\u2019s a brilliant actress. She\u2019s so effortlessly brilliant, open, and vulnerable, and I think so much of our work together was just about enjoying each other\u2019s company. It was really cool to be working with the different actors for different roles in the film because everybody\u2019s process and what they needed to do felt [so engaging]. With Naomi and me, it was so effortless the first time we met. We were just like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to build the first week of us doing friendship scenes so we could just hang out all day on camera.\u201d It was very fun. Lucas [Hedges], on the other hand, he wanted to rehearse a ton, and that was cool because I felt like I got a masterclass with all these brilliant actors.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor the character of Lydie, I was really excited to have this really exciting queer journey that feels like from the first time we meet her, she\u2019s not even aware of her queerness, and then by the end of the film, she has this family and this baby. She\u2019s living in New York, writing a book. She\u2019s totally come into her own. I feel like that was a really exciting thing to give her, sort of this joyful explosion of understanding herself, but also putting that up against Agnes, who, in the last five years, has moved a table in her house to the other side of the room \u2014that\u2019s Agnes\u2019 growth. Putting someone with a huge awakening next to someone who\u2019s just trying to make it through the day is very helpful for the storytelling of time moving in different ways for different people. It was exciting to let Liddy live her life outside of Agnes, because there\u2019s so much caretaking and worry she has for Agnes. Then I think the reason their friendship for me probably lasts a lifetime is because she prioritized herself and went to New York, even though Agnes stayed around and is stuck.<\/p>\n \n\tBut Lydie gives Agnes this huge gift of listening, of holding her and of not being afraid of what she\u2019s saying. The journey of the film is meant to show Agnes having a glimpse of what it\u2019s like to feel she could do that for someone else, and that\u2019s for the baby at the end. So, for Lydie, it\u2019s obviously the main relationship of the film, and it was always meant to be this love letter to a friendship that\u2019s so close and romantic.<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: Let\u2019s also talk about Agnes\u2019 sexuality. Agnes has Gavin as a sexual partner, but there\u2019s that scene in the courtroom where Agnes doesn\u2019t really subscribe to a gender when filling out the jury summons. You also go by she\/they pronouns, so I\u2019m curious about the intentions behind this all.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: Look, by the time you make a movie, after five years of starting to write a movie, nothing is random. Agnes goes through this experience and trauma that makes you question all these rules about the world. Such as the rules you\u2019re presented that are like, \u201cOh yeah, that\u2019s your body and no one can touch it without your permission.\u201d And there\u2019s girls and there\u2019s boys and I think after you have the kind of mind-bending experience of someone betraying one of the fundamental rules that\u2019s meant to keep you safe, it honestly has you question other rules that maybe don\u2019t serve you and I think Agnes is having an experience of trying to rebuild her body from scratch and get in touch with it after dissociating out of it. I think when she\u2019s coming back into her body, she\u2019s forced to look at a paper that says, \u201cAre you a girl or are you a boy?\u201d And Agnes is like, \u201cWell, why are there only two bubbles? That\u2019s not my experience of my body and of my life.\u201d And so, she creates her own experience of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tA character introduced at the end is Lydie\u2019s partner Fran [E. R. Fightmaster], the character and the actor are non-binary. I really wanted Fran to feel like a mirror for Agnes, showing who Agnes could be, and that\u2019s why Agnes is so mad at them all the time. Agnes can\u2019t really look at them because they are this sort of outward expression of where Agnes wishes that she was. So, Agnes is very much on a journey with gender and it\u2019s interesting.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s an interesting experience to put that, blatantly so, in a film for people to see. It\u2019s also been an interesting experience of doing press and using they\/she pronouns and being put onto lists where I\u2019m called a woman or the friendship is discussed as female friendship\u2014which I get because this is that kind of intoxicating quality of women together and Agnes kind of pronounces in the film that she\u2019s not feeling like that. But it\u2019s interesting to experience how people find it essential to box me up, when the fluidity of it is what\u2019s very comforting to me, and what feels exciting to me is being able to be two things and a million things at once. It\u2019s not necessarily a conversation; it\u2019s the nuance of that.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tSorry, Baby<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA24<\/p>\n \n\tDEADLINE: Lastly, I have to ask about the titular Baby. Agnes unloads the weight of the world on the baby by explaining that some bad life experiences are going to happen, but at least the baby has a good support system. Why was it important to frame the structure of the movie around the baby at the end?\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tVICTOR: The film is about a friendship \u2014 so the structure of the film is informed by the journey of that relationship. The beginning of the film is Lydie arriving and warming up Agnes\u2019 life up with a visit, she tells Agnes big news about a baby coming. Agnes doesn\u2019t handle this news elegantly; she responds rather selfishly, with \u201cAre you gonna name it Agnes?\u201d The middle of the film is marked by this generous, loving moment where Agnes tells Lydie what happened to her, and Lydie listens, and holds that without trying to fix it. At the end, Lydie visits Agnes with the manifestation of the news Agnes received at the beginning of the film\u2014 the baby is finally here. Time has passed. And, for the first time in a while, Agnes sees Lydie\u2019s needs outside of her own\u2014 she sees Lydie wants to go on a walk with her partner Fran, so Agnes offers to babysit, which is a much more elegant response than \u201cAre you gonna name it Agnes\u201d. And even though it\u2019s a small offering, it marks the end of Agnes not being able to see outside herself. And when she sits with the baby, which she feels, at first, a bit of jealousy towards by saying. \u201cI\u2019m no longer the baby, there\u2019s a baby now,\u201d she\u2019s able to feel of use.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tShe vows to the baby to be there to listen and to not be scared, like Lydie did for her. By listening and not being scared, Lydie saved Agnes\u2019 life. And Agnes now understands that she is capable of doing that too. The end of the film marks, to me, the end of a particular chapter of healing. Nothing is healed fully; it probably never will be. But it marks the end of these years of feeling without use. It was always the ending of the film. It\u2019s what the whole film is building towards energetically to me.<\/p>\n \n\tSorry, Baby is now streaming on HBO Max.<\/p>\n \n\t[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major details for Sorry, Baby.\u00a0 Despite the film\u2019s heartbreaking subject matter, Eva Victor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[60737,141049,88,128290,139142,1010,206,141050,98560],"class_list":{"0":"post-261474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-awardsdialogue","9":"tag-barry-jenkins","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-eva-victor","12":"tag-gotham-awards","13":"tag-hbo-max","14":"tag-movies","15":"tag-sorry-baby","16":"tag-sundance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Eva](\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-deadline-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.jpg\")
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