Actress Amy Adams on how her film Nightbitch speaks to rageful mothers

NEW YORK – Within the first 30 minutes of the magical realist dramedy Nightbitch, Amy Adams, starring as a new-ish parent teeming with fury and resentment, discovers that the oozing pustule that appeared on her back contains what appears to be a tail, the clearest sign yet that she is transforming into a dog.

Yet, unlike the protagonists in most body transformation movies, the character meets the metamorphosis not with horror or shock, but with a general curiosity, an almost radical acceptance of who she is now.

“It’s a further manifestation of what had already happened through pregnancy and post-pregnancy and nursing,” American actress Adams, 50, said in a joint interview with the film’s American writer-director Marielle Heller, 45.

“It was just one more thing, ‘Oh, look, I’ve got hair growing in weird places.’ I feel like we all get to that point where we stop judging things. I’m not horrified any more by anything. I’m just like, well, there’s that.”

That somewhat serene validation by Adams’ character, called simply Mother in the credits, is what propels the film, which premieres on Disney+ on Jan 24.

This surreal examination of how motherhood changes a woman physically and emotionally is based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Rachel Yoder.

Mother’s husband (Scoot McNairy) is travelling for work for days at a time, and she has given up her successful artist career to care for their sleep-resistant toddler. Most days are tedious and exhausting, until she meets a group of mums struggling with similar challenges.

Her canine metamorphosis, rather than being painful and monstrous, is an almost euphoric journey of self-discovery, one that has been off-putting to some viewers and revelatory to others.

“With a title like Nightbitch, people are coming in really expecting a full-on genre horror film and every bit of this movie is subverting expectations,” said Heller, whose credits include Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018) and The Diary Of A Teenage Girl (2015).

Over lunch, she and Adams had a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the challenges of being a parent today, including the identity issues that often accompany motherhood and the difficulty in rebalancing equality with one’s partner.

“It’s subverting expectations that you have of mothers, and it’s subverting expectations of how you as an audience are going to feel while you watch it.

“There’s conscientious discomfort. I’m trying to play with those feelings and toe that line,” Heller, who has two children, added. “The silences are purposeful. The discomfort that she’s feeling within her own body is palpable. There are moments where the tension between the partners is unspoken, but it’s just happening.”

Adams is still most often linked to upbeat, plucky types, whether it is the cheerful, naive princess Giselle in Enchanted (2007) or the capable, centred Lois Lane in the DC Superman films (2013 to 2017). But in this film, she is all the things you do not expect: angry, messy, bitter and very human (except when she is not).

In one memorable scene, she uses her hands to shovel meatloaf into her face without a shred of self-awareness, much to the delight of her two-year-old son (played by twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden).

Adams worked with a movement coach to transform physically into a canine digging in the grass. She was so convincing that when Mother communes with a pack by making eye contact and walking strangely – a scene the dogs and their trainers had rehearsed – one animal lunged for her face.

She said she never questioned what Heller asked of her. “Everything we did, I tried not to overthink it and just get into this instinctive, animalistic place.”

Heller agreed: “Self-consciousness would have been the death of that.”

Adams continued: “Like the death of the whole film.”

Heller added: “I also love that you’re willing to eat in this movie, and eat on-screen, because some actors won’t eat on-screen.”

“Or off-screen,” Adams responded with a laugh.

When Mother goes out to dinner with friends from her previous life as an artist, she is hoping to reconnect to the life she left behind. Instead, she feels invisible, her loneliness palpable when she has little to contribute to the conversation. Trying to play the part of her former self, she stuffs a kale salad down her throat, when all the while a meat-loving, feral beast is bubbling up from within.

It is one of Heller’s favourite scenes in the movie. She told Adams: “You got to kind of rip off the facades that we tend to walk around with as women about how well we’re keeping it all together.”

It is also the scene that seems to have burrowed into Adams’ psyche. “That betrayal of self leads to a deep identity crisis and feeling invisible and insignificant,” said the actress, who has a 14-year-old daughter with American actor-artist Darren Le Gallo. They have three dogs.

Adams took on the role at a time in her life when she needed it the most. She had just finished playing Amanda Wingfield in the West End revival of The Glass Menagerie, was bone-tired and could relate to so much that her character in the film was feeling: the exhaustion, the need to please others, the shame for even feeling “mildly rageful”.

“I know for myself, there have been times where I’ve just wanted to meet everybody’s needs or make everybody happy, or be a good girl,” she said. “Meeting Mother where I was, and getting to just bring the truth of where I was in that moment in my life, that was really freeing.”

Le Gallo also related to the film, according to Adams, crying at the end of it when Mother’s husband offers up his apology.

For the “protection” of her relationship, she would not divulge examples of how the film spoke to her own marriage, except to say: “He knows that I know, and I know that he knows, the moments where I fell into that deep rage.”

At that recent screening, another audience member asked Adams how she was able to play this character who was seemingly so different from her.

Adams said: “I was like, ‘You might want to have a conversation with my husband. He might deeply disagree.’” NYTIMES