The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Sorry, Baby.

The film feels like you have a lot of trust in the audience to be patient, to wait for explanations, and to understand nuance. Was it that way during development?
Eva Victor: Yes. I was honestly forced to be because I wrote the movie in 2021 and then sent it to my producers a couple months after I wrote it. And then we spent two years developing me as a director because I’d never done anything before. I kept asking, why would they let me do this thing? And then finally I realized, I want to direct. I called them and I said, I want to do it. And they were like, okay. It was like, oh, all I had to was declare it and really be confident enough to say I wanted to do it.

I wanted the first shot to feel like this moment of, okay, I’m going with you to show you how stillness exists in this film and invite you to sit and watch and settle so that we can inhale and exhale and then get started. After coming from the world of making videos online that had to be like 59 seconds or Instagram would cut them off, it was a real balm to make something that decided to take its time. That was what I was craving. I had to walk away from anyone’s reactions to what I was making and focus on, how can I make a film that’s slow but still has energy?

There’s this real lust for life in caring about your work

The structure helps that a lot. We definitely feel the passage of time throughout the film due to the non-linear nature. Was that a part of it early on?
EV: Yeah, I always had the chapter that starts the film be present day. And then we go back to the past and move each year. There were a few reasons for that. My first instinct was that I wanted to do that. The film was about friendship first and foremost, this main relationship between Agnes and Lydie, so I wanted the film to start with joy. So much of my job in setting up the film was letting everyone feel like they could laugh as soon as possible. That’s a part of the experience of watching the film. When things get hard, there’s a world where we can come back to laughter because we’ve already established it at the beginning. Also, I was protective over Agnes, and I wanted you to meet Agnes and not know what happened to her because I think we have a tendency to flatten people who’ve been through this kind of trauma, and paint people as tragic figures, because we’re protecting ourselves from imagining it could happen to us or to people we love. I wanted Agnes to be a full person so that later you can’t look away or dismiss her. I wanted you to fall in love with her and Lydie so that you feel the pain when they aren’t as happy later. You need to feel their love so there’s something to fight for, something to return to.

How did you connect with Lucas [Hedges] for the role of Gavin?
EV: I wrote him a bit of a letter. I wrote him a letter where I gave him basically a million compliments.

Lucas Hedges: There was also a million dollars.

EV: Right! I thought he was amazing. There were all these performances that I’d seen over a time that accumulated into what I was looking for. I didn’t know who he was, but I was right about his energy being so warm and he’s also so funny. He’s an antidote to the pain in the film a bit, energetically. He and Agnes get to live in a fun romcom along the way, one that feels light in moments. It was really nice to weave in romance, and an awkward romance.

LH: I agree! I read the letter. Sometimes I get sent nice letters by people whose scripts I don’t love. That doesn’t usually mean as much. So, I read the letter and I was like, oh, that’s sweet. You know? Sweet. And then I read the script, and the script blew me away. I was reading the script and I thought, I can’t wait to go back and read the letter again! I wanted to be a part of this project. I mean, I probably read the letter a few times, honestly. I was in awe of the fact that I’d been asked to be in this film and then asked in such a generous way. It was a dream come true.

What was it like shooting the bathtub scene? It looked very vulnerable and intimate.
LH: There was real water in the tub, actually! It was warm, then it was cold, then it got warm again.

EV: It was so hard.

LH: It was pretty cold.  

EV: That bathtub was very small and my original script didn’t have a line in it about it, so I added it. And then when Gavin reacts, your improv was so true.

LH: Oh really?

Eva Victor: I say this bathtub is small and you’re like, “what, this tub?” You were so true. The bathroom was so small that we had to shoot the scene in pieces. It was the most challenging thing we had to do because it was a vulnerable scene and I was in the bathtub the entire time, so I was just like monitoring the bathtub.

LH: And then there are crew members who are like hovering with mics.

EV: That scene is very interesting because people are taking different things from it. I think there’s this fantasy that Agnes just had this vulnerable return to pleasure in her body that he was a witness to. He did a really good job of witnessing that by not being a part of it, but by holding that moment for her to do what she needed to do. Then he gets in the tub and that hug is so nice. And then he says, “do you think you want to be a mom?” and “well, people change their minds, people want to be moms eventually.”

LH: He gives her what she needs in their intimate moment. He then does the emotionally wrong thing later. In their initial exchange, he’s able to be the witness, but then in the bathtub he comes in with an angle, with an idea.

EV: Exactly.

LH: It’s a delayed moment.

EV: I’ve heard from men and women who watch that part and guys will sometimes be like, that was so nice when he said that thing about her being mom. And the women who watched it were like, ugh, I can’t believe he said that thing. It’s a thing, when guys see you like a mom, and you’re actually a whole person. But I do think Gavin’s heart is very pure and he is imagining the future in fantasy and so is she. Then there’s a moment when she returns to being like, oh, I guess I am alone again. It’s just the way life moves. But they keep hooking up because he comes to the house later on, chronologically, so they keep it going for a little while.

His reasoning for why she would be a good mom—I think this first thing he says is “you’re nice.”  
EV: So brutal.

LH: That’s so interesting, I was like, it’s such a great scene! He’s such a great guy.

EV: That’s why it works.

LH: No, I’m joking.

EV: You are, but you’re also not. No, Lucas played it perfectly because the character is trying to connect and move into depth.

Eva, there’s been a lot of talk about what a great debut this is with the script and the directing, but it’s also a beautifully honed performance from you, especially the way you delicately portray Agnes before and after the thing that happened. Can you talk about that aspect?
EV: It was helpful because by the time I started my acting prep, I’d written the script like two years before. I actually didn’t know some of the answers to why I made things certain ways in the script. I had to trust my past self that there’s a reason something was the way it was, and find a way to understand that. There was a lot of me and my acting coach mapping things out, like, there are these three scenes before this thing happens. Obviously, this kind of violence is devastating for a bunch of reasons. There’s a sort of divorcing of the body from the mind, without permission. Someone forced that on you. Another thing that came up when we were talking was this person’s life force and creative energy. This person’s in grad school. It’s a gift you give yourself to say, I’m going to spend my time on this thing I’m passionate about. There’s this real lust for life in caring about your work, and he robs her of that joy and excitement for the future. That was something that had to exist in a couple scenes before we see what happens. It was also really important to me that we didn’t undermine her by making him feel evil along the way. Louis [Cancelmi] and I worked really hard to make it feel like there is this vibe, there is this creative alignment. That is sensual, even if it’s platonic; it can be nuanced. She could even have a crush on him—that’s not what happened, but even if she did, that would be okay. She’s a young person who’s dreaming and there’s an energy with this person and he robs her of her ability to dream. Working on those scenes, we really had to show the youth and the hope. It was such a relief to get to do the scene where she is teaching, because that marked for me a moment of not being self-conscious. She’s finally in her purpose again and she has all this stuff to say about the book and the students are engaged. That’s what’s taken from her when a knock comes to the door from Natasha and pulls her back into this whole other thing. 

But also, I come from a more comedic place, and she’s so calm. Her saying, “I think I want to light Decker’s office on fire,” felt like this trap. I had an instinct to ham it up, but I had to remind myself not to do that. Agnes was terrified that she might actually do that. And so Lydie’s the one who gets to be like, “I’ll do it.” She gets to be the more heroic part. For me, there was a constant calibration of what’s true and how does this journey unfold in a way that doesn’t feel like it has a bow on it, because that was what I was most worried about. I didn’t want it to feel like she landed somewhere ever, just that she’s constantly trying to live as best as she can.