Promising Young Womanis a film designed to be discussed. The feature-directing debut fromEmerald Fennell, the film starsCarey Mulliganas Cassandra, who once a week pretends to be blackout drunk at a local bar to teach a lesson to whichever man takes (see: carries) her home. It’s an act of contrition for Cassandra, in remembrance of a med school friend, Nina, who met a tragic end, but the mission gets complicated when she starts to fall for an extremely Nice Guy from her past, Ryan (Bo Burnham).
We recently hopped on Zoom with Bo Burnham to discuss the movie, why it’s both super awkward and super vital for men to discuss this movie, how culpable his character feels, reckoning with old comedy material, and the artistic merits ofParis Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind.”
Collider: I feel like it speaks to the power of this movie that my first thought after volunteering to do this interview was kind of like, how dare two guys discuss this movie?
BO BURNHAM: [laughs] I think that’s a good first reaction, but then it’s like, I know Emerald would be very happy that two guys are discussing this movie. That’s what she wants. I think that she very much wants this movie to be something that would be discussed. If conversations, like weird, messy, strange, or like conversations like this aren’t had between men and are only had in the presence of women, then that’s a problem. Guys need to start feeling comfortable to engage with this stuff. But it’s understandable that like, who are we to write the tell-all on the thematics of this thing?
Yeah, no, I really came around to the idea of, “Of coursemen need…”
BURNHAM: Yeah. We’re the ones that actually need to talk about it. They don’t. Women don’t. They’ve lived it, so they don’t really need to talk about this as much.
In preparing for this role, how do you approach finding empathy for a character when the movie itself is sort of challenging who we empathize with?
BURNHAM: It felt pretty functionally important for me to just kind of fully identify with this guy. I just felt like it’d be easier to just try to externalize him…the point is just it felt like, for the function of the story, it felt important that anything that he could be capable of, I could in theory be capable of. Just because the movie is really trying to interrogate, I think, the idea of the men who think they’re the good ones. And I, embarrassingly, have been that person who thinks, “well, it’s definitely not me. I’m definitely one of the good, sensitive, thoughtful guys.” So it’s like, it felt sort of important to not overthink things and just kind of go try to make it feel personal and grounded.
I’m curious about the discussions you and Emerald had about how culpable Ryan feels in the end about what happened to Nina, even if he doesn’t voice it.
BURNHAM: We didn’t have a ton. Emerald kind of gave a lot of rope on that, because I don’t think we wanted to resolve too much, like what the truth was, because it becomes sort of messy and gray at that point. It’s almost kind of butting up against this kind of irresolvable messiness, where we’re trying to present something that people would genuinely fight about and genuinely would argue about. So we kind of didn’t want to resolve that. I know for me, I sort of believe that whatever happened, Ryan genuinely does not remember it, which is probably worse than if he did remember it. That he could even be in a position to have that be forgettable.
It’s almost like it didn’t affect him.
BURNHAM: Exactly, exactly. Or he is just able to totally compartmentalize it as all the crazy things that happen in college and just another crazy party. So yeah. I definitely didn’t attempt to like work backward from a revelation to build a character because that felt like not the point. It wasn’t that he’s some Machiavellian person, that he’s revealed to be a monster. It’s like, no, no, he is the genuinely nice guy that could be your brother or could be…
Brett Kavanaugh is obviously like an interesting example because when I watched him, I really did believe that he believed what he was saying. That’s what makes it worse. Like it’d be so much easier if this guy was just like some psychotic liar, but the issue is that maybe he does actually believe he’s good and does believe he did nothing wrong, and that makes it worse. Or that makes it just such a more difficult thing to address. That’s what Emerald’s getting at in this movie, is that these aren’t nice guys who then close the door and twiddle their mustache. They’re nice guys that even in private moments behind closed doors think they’re nice. The lie is even to themselves. So I had to just believe that. I didn’t want to be like floating above the character, judging him because of where it ends up.
It’s interesting because the character even says a line, he says to Cassandra, “Oh, like you’ve never done anything wrong in your life.” And then you keep watching the movie, and it kind of makes you explore why you might initially agree with that.
BURNHAM: There’s also a little bit of like, there’s the idea I kind of latched onto a little bit of the compartmentalizing, the “surgeon switch” that I’ve heard of. Like the ability to cut open a kid, you kind of have to have a switch where you can just turn shit off. And so I think he has that ability to just turn off things when he needs to and stow things away, and at that moment, it all sort of comes pouring out.
We did an interview with Emerald, and she said something really interesting about how she occasionally gave the direction to the male cast members to play it like you’re the hero of a rom-com. What was it like finding that energy, given the surrounding context?
BURNHAM: Well, what’s funny for me, it really did feel like a rom-com. For most of my role, it really was just pleasant rom-com stuff. Like we’re just going on a day, we’re doing this stuff. So it really was very basic. I’m just in these scenes. And I wasn’t trying to be a rom-com lead. I was just being like, just try to flirt with this person. Just try to get her to like you, try to make her smile, and try to make her laugh. Just try to do those simple things. I just wanted it to feel real and grounded between Carrie and I, so it just felt like human and safe.
I loved [Burnham’s directorial debut]Eighth Grade, and that movie, it really puts on display howearlythis shit starts for women. I’m wondering if you were aware of the parallels when you came onto this project?
BURNHAM: That’s interesting. I wasn’t really. I mean, I wasn’t really thinking of that just because, as much as there are parallels, this is a movie I could never have made. It’s so beyond my perspective or anything. But it’s interesting. Certainly, that scene in the car inEighth Gradeis talking about the same thing. And certainly the men in this [Promising Young Woman] are forged in the time ofEighth Grade. Like, if better sex education and more communication to boys would lead to better, more communicative men. There’s definitely a discussion happening between the two movies, for sure.
And I think probably Emerald and I connected because we do have similar enough sensibilities. So it makes sense that our movies in some way exist or just relate to each other in some way.
You put comedy online at 16, 17 years old, and so much of being a comedian is looking back and evolving. I’m curious how you related toPromising Young Woman, which is so much about wrestling with your past, just as a comedian?
BURNHAM: It’s so interesting. It’s funny because the movie definitely explores the defensiveness of men to look back at their past behavior, and there’s no more defensive men in the world than comedians. They always want to look back at their behavior and go like, “Whatever, who cares?” But as someone who, I mean, I was 16 in 2006, you know what I mean? So it’s like a totally different time, one, and..my specials, I did a special at 18, then 20, then 23, then 25. So I was such a different person over the course of those things.
And I don’t look back at my material, but when I somehow do or it’s brought to my attention, there’s so much that I’m so embarrassed by and so regretful of. Even my whole career comedically has almost been like I just write it to correct. It’s like, “Okay, forget all that stuff. Now I need to make a new thing, so people don’t think I’m the person that made the old stuff anymore.”
But I think that’s sort of the case with a lot of people my age and definitely people younger, we are aware because our lives are so… It’s not just me being a comedian, it’s really just being alive in 2020. We all have to confront our past version of ourselves, and it’s just there, and it’s painful, and it’s painful to acknowledge, and it’s embarrassing. But all you can do is, hopefully, you can acknowledge those mistakes without getting super, super defensive, and hopefully, you can grow.
But yeah, I mean, I’m a comedian, but I don’t really self-identify with comedians. I think just comedians in general, as a demo, tend to be like, I don’t know, just so defensive and so against change. My sense of humor is very, very different from when I started, from even four years ago, it’s all changed. So it’s like a messy thing. And it’s a product of being alive now. And it’s something we all have to sort of deal with and contend with. And I’ll continue to contend with it.
One final question, because I’ve seen some debate: Is “Stars Are Blind” ironically good or un-ironically good?
BURNHAM: Oh, I think it’s good. I definitely think it’s good. I mean, I also don’t know what the line between good and ironically good even is anymore, but I do think the movie kind of aesthetically reclaims a certain type of thing that maybe our culture has dismissed as girly or thin or lacking depth and realizing that like, no, no, these pop songs that we think are just shallow, the lyric is like, “Even if the stars are blind.” It’s like a chilling T.S. Eliot line or something.
What I love is that the movie really reclaims a visual aesthetic as well. When it’s like, these things are great, like bright saturated colors and neon and pop music. These can be weaponized and be barbed and interesting and just as interesting as gangster movies or cowboys or any of the aesthetics we usually think of as serious and cool or whatever.
