Sundance 2025: An Interview with the Makers of “Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail?”

Park City is currently under an ambush of snow. As a born and bred Midwesterner, this is fine. As a creature of the flatlands, it’s the series of Utah inclines that I have to conquer. I’m hiking up Main Street, turning onto a long hilly road heading to the condo where I’ll be speaking with the team behind “Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail?”: writer-director Bec Pecaut, producer Emily Harris, and lead actor Lío Mehiel (the first ever trans actor to win the Sundance Jury Prize). As I trudge uphill, approaching the street of the addressed road, I notice I have to ascend a comedically long and steep driveway. The grace of Sundance is the mountainous landscape, and after loving their film, I’m beyond excited for this interview, so I laugh my way up. A when-in-Rome type feeling. I’m warmly greeted by Bec and Emily, as we arrive at almost the same time, and they lead me up the stairs into the condo to sit down with them and Lío, who is already inside. 

I’d like to start by asking what the impetus of creating this project was and how you all came together as a team. 

Bec Pecaut (BP): Emily and I are friends from high school. For me, Emily is the left brain to my right brain. She was doing well at her production company and through our friendship I asked if she wanted to work with me as a partner. I can write things forever in a vacuum, but I don’t know how to get things out there. 

I had just gotten top surgery and I was very shocked by how hard the week right after it was. Everyone I knew that had gotten it was like, “It’s awesome! It’s the best thing that’s ever happened!” and I was like, “Amazing, but also I just got my whole body cut open and I feel really fucked up,” and it was hard finding a dialogue about that. I thought it’d make a really interesting film because it’s this nebulous period where you’re just waiting to feel the good stuff you signed up for and not all the hard stuff. So the script came out really quick. And then Emily, per usual, was like, “This is what we need to do.” And we put out a casting call on Instagram for an actor who had gotten top surgery, and Lío got that call from a mutual friend because we didn’t know each other beforehand.

Emily Harris (EH): There was so much kismet to making this film. Before we felt comfortable engaging in any next steps in terms of above the line, collaborators, partners, we knew for sure that we wouldn’t make this film without a lead performer who had gone through this experience. We weren’t comfortable with the idea. Context is so important. To find someone who had the experience and could carry the nuance, it really is a needle in a haystack, so it really was miraculous and magic that it came to Lío. 

Lío Mehiel (LM): I DM’ed Bec and was like “Bro, I’ve never seen top surgery portrayed on screen.” I love top surgery. I love it. I love the recovery. I love the uniqueness of the body posture you have to be in for weeks after. The first week is the most intense because of the bandage but even for a month after you have the stitches across your chest and you’re afraid to break them or stretch them. I was afraid of ripping them, like standing up straight and breaking them and my heart just popping out of my chest. So there’s this hunched over posture. You kind of become this T-Rex kind of thing and I’m a very physical person. I was a dancer as a kid and my dream as an actor is to do roles that require a lot of physical engagement and transformation. So I was like, oh my god, the chance to do a nuanced, subtle physical performance where the body is so important to the story … I could immediately sense that this was something that would be such an honor to do. 

EH: We also knew for sure that the production approach to this was very clean and purposely simplistic. We wanted a small crew, practically, but also the way Bec likes to work is very collaborative which isn’t enhanced by a big unit. I’m lucky enough to be pretty dug into our Toronto film scene, so we were able to put together an approach that we could execute fairly fast. And we had another bit of what felt like magic that we premiered at TIFF a year to the date of wrapping the three days of shooting we did the year before. 

BP: When we shot it, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had. I told Emily, “I really want only queer people or women.” It’s a really vulnerable and tender story and I didn’t want us to be observed. It worked so well. 

EH: The feeling of the crew and how we made this film had so much cohesive energy through every aspect.

BP: In queer spaces, it’s easier to trust everyone. You can tell everyone could feel it was something very special. It felt like an easy thing to make, which I had never experienced before. It was a combination of us working on the story and things that felt true to everyone. I didn’t want to just make a story about my top surgery experience. It is a lot of people’s experience. I wanted to incorporate Lío’s story and other people on set. It was a mirroring effect of everyone’s perspectives. It was a very joyful process and I don’t think I’d ever make anything that didn’t feel like that again. 

That community aspect of going through something like this is something that’s super remarkable but it’s also unremarkable in the sense that you know so many other people have either experienced it directly or peripherally. So being in a space to create that story all together sounds really empowering. Lío, I wanted to ask — you mentioned how your past work has been a kind of consequential scrapbook of your own transition. And in your experience with top surgery — it’s this joyous occasion, but when you’re in so much pain and unable to have normal autonomy in recovery it can be hard to feel it wholly. Is there a level of joyous grief that comes with the transitional element? And do you find this within Feña in “Mutt” or Violeta in “In The Summers?” How did you meet them where they’re at? 

LM: Top surgery for me, after getting the surgery, I didn’t feel grief. I felt for the first time like I gave myself permission to do something I wanted to do but didn’t need to do. I feel like that distinction is really important because I have friends who are like, “If I don’t get this gender affirming care, I don’t want to be here.” There’s an intensity and clarity with which they understand themselves in their body and what they need. For me, my mom is such a beautiful person and has always accepted me in all of my changing expressions and presentations, but she taught me in this sort of Puerto Rican Catholic way that this body was given to me by God and it’s perfect and I am meant to take care of it. So I had this sort of double-think or doubt where I was like, “I really want this thing. I feel drawn to it, but at the same time I could live without it maybe and I’d be okay.” What I didn’t realize until booking the appointment and was approaching surgery was that I’d been looking at myself in the mirror and erasing this part of my body without even realizing it. I was dissociating but also seeing a phantom in the mirror and then I could appreciate the difference between being okay with yourself and loving yourself. 

I thought I was happy enough, or accepting enough, but the difference between “enough” and euphoria is massive. I didn’t have grief afterwards, I had grief leading up to it because I was nervous, but what was so cool about working on this film was that it wasn’t really centered on the grief around the gender piece of it — it was around the grief of being so vulnerable in your body that you have to confront the traumas that you have in your relationships and your life because you’re in a vulnerable state where your defenses are down and you need someone to wipe your butt and you just need to be held because you’ve been through this shock. And then that brings up: “Oh, maybe me and my partner aren’t on the same page. Do they really love me? Am I really secure in my attachment?” And then with the mom, feeling estranged from her but then at the same time, having this opportunity to reconnect because of the vulnerability of it all. 

Bec, I’m curious about the writing of these relationships. You totally feel the shift from beginning to the end, even in the way it’s shot. You start close up with Mad and Kat, and then pull back in the middle, and come back in with them and their mom at the end. I was interested in this subversion and what inspired you to tap into that shift in dynamic. Parental relationships can be so complex, as can romantic ones, of course, in different ways, but it felt like a subversion. 

BP: It feels true to my experience — I did have that period of estrangement. Transition or not, so many queer people — or even people who have a different dream than their parents — that transition is the ultimate embodiment of a dream; you will always go through that period with your family where you differentiate or have different ideas about who you are. My mom is not a bigot, she’s a sweet lady, and she was like, “I don’t know anyone who’s done this and I don’t know how to help you, but I know you’re going to surgery so I want you to recover here.” And I was in a situation where, as queer people do, we create chosen families, and relationships can become easily codependent and there’s the pattern of making your partner your parent. So it really came from that, where my partner wanted to take care of me but it’s very intense and it’s too much honestly — you need a community. I was resistant to my mom’s help because I had to be vulnerable for her to help me, and this went into the character. I didn’t want the story to feel like “this person’s partner can’t handle it and that makes them bad, but their mom can and your mom will always be there for you.” It kind of goes into the title. All of them are a little scared to show up the way they want to. Mad is scared to be vulnerable. Kat is scared to be needed so much. The mom doesn’t know all about pronouns and didn’t grow up speaking this way — they’re scared to be incorrect. Space is healthy, they’re not bad people. No one is trying to be against one another; they’re scared that they won’t be enough for each other or exactly who they need. But it’s never going to be perfect and that’s why I think it’s a happy movie in my opinion. 

One thing I was super curious about too: I have to admit I need to know what that refrigerator horror movie was that they watch in the film. And also in Mad’s bedroom, I was able to clock posters from “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” “The Blob,” and “Halloween.” This is by no means a horror short, but does horror affect the way you write or think whether primarily or peripherally?

BP: I love that you picked up on that. Our production designer was so amazing and totally on every single detail. I had this idea before filming where I wanted to make this character’s childhood bedroom an homage to their fascination with horror, and maybe this idea of growing up with the thought of “what if I’m the monster in my own house?” I think a lot of trans people feel like that: maybe you’re being hunted, or you’re going to be outed, or cast out. I wanted to use monster movies as a metaphor for that feeling, and with it being in their childhood room, it’s like an early trans representation. Conversely, you see that they’re quite perturbed by the blood on their chest and the body horror of themselves. I thought it was an interesting character trait to have someone who loves horror but when they’re experiencing the blood and gore, it’s too visceral and unnerving.

But that film is “The Refrigerator!” It’s a B-Horror from the 90s made by this guy I’m friends with in LA. It’s the only movie he’s made but it lives on! The only other film it’s featured in is “Monster” with Charlize Theron.

EH: It’s sort of like a circular Monster movie thing going on! And we’re very grateful to him for allowing us to use it.

BP: Yes, absolutely, and I thought it was so interesting. Both queer movies!

I thought your use of spaces was interesting as well. Bathrooms and bedrooms can kind of be warzones in self perception. Definitely not the most friendly spaces always. But then of course at the end of the movie, Mad finds themselves outside and they’re finally able to look down. It feels comfortable in that moment. You were saying the writing of the story became a collective of the experiences of everyone on set — were spaces part of that discussion?

BP: I think that it’s a feeling of claustrophobia. Internal anxiety and claustrophobia in our brains where we’re unable to receive outside perspective. It was having the world mirror that. It’s small and they feel trapped inside. And so often, we love our captor. We love our anxiety. We don’t know what we’d do without that voice criticizing us in our head. It’s comfortable in a sick and twisted way. The idea of going outside becomes scarier, physically and in the feeling itself. Nature is letting go. Just needing air. *Laughing.* It’s very “touch grass.”

EH: I feel like it’s worth noting here that so much of capturing that claustrophobia is in due credit to our amazing cinematographer, Alice Stevens. It was a very physical project for her. A lot of handheld, and I have the craziest photo of her shooting inside the car. 

BP: She’s like 5’8 and cramming herself in. 

EH: She’s capturing so much of it herself as the operator, handheld, and did such an incredible job. That visual language is such a strong collaboration between them two. 

BP: We were really lucky to use Emily’s mom’s house. It’s this perfect, cozy space. Exactly the kind of interior we want where it feels like there’s enough room in the home but you know your mom is right around the corner.  

EH: If you’re doing a short film and are able to own the location, you are already ahead!

Lío, what was that like as a performer in those spaces? Knowing that you enjoy being a physical actor — did that influence you at all?

LM: A lot of scenes go on in bathrooms. I’m, like, always in a bathroom *laughing* because it’s intimate and psychological as a space. As an actor, you kind of have to feel like all rooms are bathrooms. My psyche expands to the size of the space, and with bathrooms, it’s just you and you. It’s like the one truly private place. I don’t know that I was thinking much about space — I was thinking more about my body and relationships with the characters. I felt so trusting of Bec to give me the feedback that I needed, so I wasn’t focusing as much about the “how” of existing in the frame. 

I don’t want to take up too much more time, so I wanted to close out by asking about the title. As women and non-binary artists and professionals in this industry, how do you relate to that question? How have you gotten to this point, and what do you hope people get from it?

BP: For me, the title was a question I had written in my diary. It really captured the film. I do think it worked perfectly because it’s disarming, and so is the film. It purports to be one thing, the journey after top surgery, but it’s actually about relationships. I think putting it out there in the world, this idea of being paralyzed for so long and feeling like it took me a long time to get to where I want to go, it made me ask: What is failure? Failure is not trying, and this film is about a lot of people trying to show up as best they can. If you’re trying, you’re not failing. It’s an impossible question. 

EH: I like that. I definitely come at it from a different perspective that I fully acknowledge, but I think I’ve navigated this industry with a lot of optimism. My philosophy is that if you know you’ve done your best and you’ve left it on the field and it isn’t received, then your job is to continue to move forward. I believe in a war of attrition model of creativity and effort. Why not me? Why not us? I’ve seen people pull a punch and I endeavor not to do that in the films that I am lucky enough to work on. So I’m not scared of failing, I’m scared of not trying — which I guess is similar. 

LM: It’s funny, I was thinking about this yesterday. As an actor, everyone’s like, “Be yourself, you can only be you. If you’re your most authentic self, that’s how you can have success.” And it’s really hard to believe that, especially the smarter you are. I don’t purport to be the most brilliant person, but I am an overthinking mind. So I can often — with the director, writer, and producer in me — know what people want. And I can do that, but I’m not really it. I historically have given myself the F before I start. But now, I remind myself: “What if you don’t know what they want? What if you can show them what they want?” And also maybe I don’t want the things that are not meant for me. It’s a real psychological experience, having your body and your voice be the thing you’re selling, and the question of the title is sort of at the center of that. It’s the question of: “Can I be brave enough every time to say this is my version?” even though there’s a little voice in my head. Letting that go and knowing what is for me will come to me, and I have to release my attachment to what I think that is.