'Nightbitch' puts motherhood into perspective for Amy Adams: 'It's such a big job'
Some actors work for peanuts. For Amy Adams, it's Froot Loops.
In her new dark comedy “Nightbitch” (in theaters Friday), Adams plays a stay-at-home mother with a young son (played by 3-year-old twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden) who starts to believe she’s turning into a dog. The opening scene finds the weary parent in a grocery store with her child when she runs into the woman who has her old job, and the mom gets very real about how she feels "stuck inside of a prison of my own creation."
Adams, 50, kept pieces of breakfast cereal in her shirt pocket to give the two little actors and keep them engaged between takes. “I remember the boys just staring at me, locked in and ready for their Froot Loop,” she says. But “they figured out where I kept it and they were like, ‘Oh, I know how to get it.’”
And, yes, Adams would partake herself sometimes. “The reason I chose Froot Loops is because I'm like, ‘What would I want after a take?'” she says with a laugh. (The six-time Oscar nominee's other favorite set snacks: “Cheetos, turkey jerky and Skittles.”)
Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive Paste BN's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox.
Trying to nail an extended oration while a toddler roots around for treats “pretty much describes my experience on ‘Nightbitch,’ and of parenthood,” says Adams, a mom to 14-year-old Aviana (with her actor/director husband Darren Le Gallo).
In "Nightbitch," director Marielle Heller’s adaptation of the 2021 Rachel Yoder novel, Adams produces and stars as an unnamed mother exhausted by the sleepless nights and daily grind of taking care of her child while her husband (Scoot McNairy) travels for work. She’s already not in a great place emotionally when she first notices fur on her back, followed by sharpened teeth and a developing tail, but she embraces this primal canine nature that begins to unleash positive changes in her life.
She's acted opposite Muppets and Superman, and played everything from a Disney princess (“Enchanted”) to an alien-friendly linguist (“Arrival”), yet “Nightbitch” marks Adams’ wildest role, offering elements of body horror and magical realism.
She eats, growls and sniffs like a dog, has animalistic sex with her spouse, and flies kung fu-like through the air. In one of her favorite scenes, when the mother is out to dinner with her old grad school friends, she delivers an internal monologue about how no one hears her or cares what she has to says. She suppresses her inner rage by shoving kale salad down her throat before spitting it back up, and then takes out her anger on a cheeseburger.
“There's certain things we're not supposed to say or talk about and people just don't listen," Heller says. "Any parent knows what it feels like to feel tuned out. But particularly I think there's this feeling that as women age, we become more and more invisible and there's a pain in that invisibility."
Adams had plenty of primal, four-legged inspiration on the set: She hung around with real dogs, and there’s one feral and empowering moment where her character runs through the night with them. “To be sort of a pack leader was fun,” she says with a laugh. “Unfortunately, me being around a bunch of dogs puts me into (the mind-set of) let's lay down and take a nap. That's my dog personality – it's very sort of golden retriever.”
Her canine co-stars forced Adams and others to be focused at all times, as did the little human actors. Heller remembers her 2-year-old daughter showing up to the “Nightbitch” set and the twin boys being in her lap was "very uncomfortable for her.” Adams says she didn’t even take her daughter to work when she was younger: “I never wanted her to feel that she wasn't a priority.”
Aviana walked the red carpet with her parents at the Toronto Film Festival premiere of “Nightbitch” but did not stick around for the screening. “Sometimes, seeing your mom in certain situations is not great for that age group,” says Adams, whose daughter will usually watch her films two or three years after they come out.
“Weirdly enough, we're so not centered around what I do in my household,” the actress adds, laughing. And for the record, Aviana’s “preferred make-believe partner” growing up was her dad, not Adams: “She didn't like my professional approach or something.”
But Adams tears up when thinking about how working with the “Nightbitch” kids made her miss those earlier days with her daughter.
“It made me want to go back,” Adams says. “Monotony becomes memory and then it's gone and it's replaced by something else and it's really beautiful. But why didn't I let her just paint all over the floor? Why did I make her stay on a little sheet? Why didn't I encourage her to unleash something feral inside of herself?
“It made me look at my parenting and be like, ‘Maybe I need to let go a little bit and be present,’” she says. “Every parent that I've spoken to in my orbit, there's always conversations about how we can make the most of each moment, how we can move forward, the lessons we're teaching. It's just such a big job.
“What I wouldn't give to sing my daughter her lullaby five times at night. I would love to do that now. I'm going to try it tonight and see what happens. She's going to be like, ‘What?!’”