Nightbitch Director Marielle Heller Opens Up About the Amy Adams Adventure

Being a parent can have a surprising impact on someone, turning a mother or father into someone they no longer recognize. In the upcoming movie Nightbitch, Amy Adams plays a character who isn’t just figuratively transformed into something else, but literally undergoes a life-changing metamorphosis. Far from being the expected exploration of motherhood, writer/director Marielle Heller put an outlandish spin on the premise, though it’s a spin that virtually every parent can relate to in some capacity. ComicBook recently caught up with Heller to talk about her goals with the project, future projects, and more. Nightbitch lands in theaters on December 6th.

Searchlight Pictures describes the movie, “A woman (Amy Adams) pauses her career to be a stay-at-home mom, but soon her new domesticity takes a surreal turn.”

“I was pleasantly surprised that no one along the way tried to stop me from keeping this title,” Heller confessed about maintaining the film’s evocative title. “I will say, and I don’t think it I don’t think I’m saying too much, to say all my other movies have really long names. They’re all like five or six words long, and I have actually fought battles about the titles of multiple movies of mine, and this was the only one where it was just like this clear, perfect title.”

[RELATED – Amy Adams Stars in Nightbitch Trailer]

In addition to the title of the movie being evocative, Heller also expressed how the story itself is something she found elicited complicated reactions from audiences.

“I don’t think talking about women’s bodies and women’s aging bodies makes people very comfortable, if I’m being honest,” the filmmaker shared. “I didn’t even really realize until embarking on this movie how much of a taboo it is to really be honest about what happens with women’s bodies as we age, and to talk about all the dark thoughts that might go through your head when you do become a mother.”

She added, “I think we’re much more comfortable when motherhood is either presented as this perfect, fun, sweet thing you get to do, or these people don’t want to be mothers, and that’s okay, too. But this sort of like grey zone … I mean, look at what we’re dealing with in our presidential election. A childless cat lady becomes a thing that people say about one of the most powerful women in the world, who is a wonderful stepmother. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous that we defined women about whether they want to have kids or don’t want to have kids, when the truth of the matter is, it’s a much more complicated thing, and a lot of us have relationships with it that are really complex. It’s not all rosy or all this. I love being a mother, and it’s also really hard and it’s also really isolating, and there are times I feel like I’ve made a huge mistake and there’s monotony and boredom that comes with it that is so awful. And yet, I also know it’s fleeting and it’s going to go away at any moment. It’s just one of those really painful things, and I wanted to really show it from a more honest point of view, and also really from the mother’s point of view.”

While looking to the future and what projects Heller could tackle next, she expressed how by looking to the future she could see what it was that really drew her not only to Nightbitch, but any project she makes.

“It’s funny, because I don’t intentionally set out to make movies about real people,” the filmmaker pointed out. “I like making movies based on whatever is inspiring me about the story and what I need to learn about at that time. I think, clearly, I was processing some of my own feelings about motherhood and the difficulty I’ve had with … like, can you be a parent and not lose yourself? And the times when I feel like I’m succeeding or failing at that was what I wanted to focus on in this, and we’ll see what the next phase of my life brings in who I want to make a movie about then.”

Nightbitch lands in theaters on December 6th.