Hannah, a teen actress, just wants to be great. And she’ll sacrifice everything to get there.
In writer-director Sophia Takal’s new film “Act One,” debuting at the Tribeca Festival on June 10, Ella Beatty throws herself into a performance as a would-be star who, snubbed by her school’s drama club, enrolls in an acting class led by the compelling and enigmatic Melanie (Ari Graynor), a stage star who’s downshifted into manipulating and dominating the performers in her thrall. Beatty begins to lose her sense of self as alcohol-fueled late-night sessions, a sexually compelling fellow student (Nate Mann) and Melanie’s own relentlessness push her to the edge.
All of this was familiar territory for Takal, who shot the film in New Jersey close to where she grew up as an aspiring actress herself. In the years since, Takal’s films have played festivals (2016’s “Always Shine” won Mackenzie Davis an acting prize at Tribeca) and played multiplexes (she collaborated with Blumhouse on the 2019 remake of sorority-slasher drama “Black Christmas”); “Act One,” with its gnarly willingness to explore teenage ambition and sexuality, makes for a new calling-card.
Takal spoke to Variety about what from her teen acting days made it into “Act One,” the ‘90s thrillers that inspired her and whether Hollywood has grown scared of depicting sex onscreen.
This movie really tracks Hannah’s evolution as a performer, and the actor playing Hannah has to hit each point of this transformation. How did Ella Beatty come to be your Hannah?
I’m never sure how much to divulge, but I had a different cast. I wrote the script in 2020, right when COVID started, and was trying to get it off the ground in a more conventional indie way with a different cast. That cast included an actress playing Hannah, who was an amazing actress also, but it’s just hard to get something off the ground. The strikes happened, and I put that version of the project away.
Another script that I was going to direct got financing, and there was a role I had been talking to Ella about. I had met her on a general meeting in L.A. and I really responded to her — she was maybe the first Gen Z person I had ever spoken to, and she was so grounded and an old soul. She came to an actor-writer group at our house, where actors would cold-read scenes that writers were working on, and she nailed every tone. That project fell apart, but some of the financiers were able to transition the money to “Act One.”
How long a shoot were you able to do?
We squeezed out a good chunk of time. I hadn’t made an indie in a decade, but the way I’ve always been able to make this level of independent film is you just have to ask for a lot of favors. I had written the movie with my hometown in mind — I was visualizing the acting studio that I took acting classes in as a high schooler. That’s where we ended up shooting all the actual studio stuff.
How much did your commitment to acting as a teen mirror Hannah’s?
Hannah represents how I felt in high school. I don’t know if that’s how someone who knew me in high school would say I presented — I was probably a lot more loud and annoying. But her commitment to acting and wanting to do anything to become an actor, and her feeling of alienation from her family and from her high school life and people her own age — that definitely is how I felt.
There are obvious comparisons for films about artists desperate to achieve greatness and to lose themself in their work — “Black Swan,” “Whiplash.” But what other movies were on your mood board?
Because it’s a period piece — I loved these movies when I was a teenage girl, the ‘90s good-girl-gone-bad movies, like “Fear” or “The Babysitter” or “The Crush” or “Poison Ivy.” These movies were really important touchstones, particularly when it came to thinking about teenage girls and their relationship to sexuality and desire — the idea of pushing past what you’re comfortable with in order to figure out what you actually are comfortable with.
That was something that we talked about — how can we take these movies that sexualized teenage girls, and therefore allowed other teenage girls to feel that desire when they watched it, but also tell it from a more female perspective.
Even taking Hannah’s acting ambitions out of the equation, the film depicts a pivotal moment in her growing up.
I remember being that teenage girl — it’s a very confusing and precarious time. I had found the conversation around young women had felt a little flattening, like it was taking away a bit of agency and desire from young women in the culture. I wanted to make a movie that explored that gray area — you know she is being manipulated, but she’s also consenting to that manipulation.
Were there elements of your own study of acting that you especially drew on?
There’s a scene where [Melanie] is like “You’re an ingenue if you take off your glasses” — I had an acting teacher tell that to me in high school. There was the “type” conversation. And when I was speaking to actors about various roles, every single actor asked if Melanie was based on their acting teacher. Everyone knew someone, and it was all different people. There’s something universal about this Svengali acting teacher.
You have a background in horror directing, and there are certainly frightening elements in “Act One.” Given the success of “Backrooms” and “Obsession” recently, is this a direction you’d like to keep moving toward?
I tend to be drawn to complicated dynamics between women, and psychosexual, erotic themes tend to bleed into that. I’m interested in continuing in that vein of exploration — but I want to continue exploring things rooted in psychology and rooted in character as opposed to a slasher.
You cited ‘90s teen thrillers earlier, and thinking, too, about the prevalence of erotic thrillers in the 1980s — these styles of films are far less common today. Do you think Hollywood’s grown more scared of sex?
I keep hearing Hollywood wants erotic thrillers. It’s a push and pull. There’s probably a lot of reasons — porn is really easy to access now, and Gen Z doesn’t like watching sex onscreen. There’s this received wisdom among the executive set that is not necessarily what’s true about what people want to see. When we were trying to raise money, a llot of executives were like, “We love this, but we can’t show a teenage girl having sex,” even though she’s about to be 18. I was like, “If it took place three months later, would that be okay?” Everybody I talk to about the sex scene, especially women, they’re like, “It’s kind of hot.” But Hollywood is always a bit more conservative than what people want to see.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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