As annoyed as I was about Barry Jenkins, one of the greatest filmmakers working today, recently helming a prequel to the worst Disney remake in history, the Oscar-winning director of “Moonlight” has also been helping launch some of the most exciting careers in modern cinema over the past few years. I’m thinking specifically of Charlotte Wells, Raven Jackson and now Eva Victor, whose respective debut features “Aftersun,” “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” and “Sorry, Baby” were all produced by Jenkins through his production company, Pastel. Though awards season hasn’t yet begun, there is no question that “Sorry, Baby” will be ranking among my very favorite films of 2025.
Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Sorry, Baby” serves as an extraordinary showcase for its writer, director and star, Victor, who plays the lead role of Agnes. Like Victor, Agnes has a natural wit that can’t help breaking through, even in times that are troubling, to say the least. After enduring a traumatic encounter with her college professor (Preston Decker) at his house, Agnes seeks solace in her close friendship with the loyal Lydie (Naomi Ackie), her intimacy with neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges) and her cuddling with a stray cat she spontaneously adopts. Yet her journey toward healing is one that she can only embark on herself, and it can get lonely as the rest of the world moves on, at times with an obliviousness bordering on absurd.
Prior to attending the Chicago premiere of their magnificent movie at the Music Box Theatre, where it screened in May as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival, Victor spoke with Cinema Femme about the profound experience of making “Sorry, Baby” and the inspiration they received from their late professor at Northwestern University.
I loved your film so much that I’ve already seen it twice and am seeing it again tonight.
You have? That’s too many times. You’re going to get tired of it. I’ve seen it about 70 times, and it’s very difficult for me to watch. But thank you so much!
You’ve spoken about how Barry Jenkins encouraged you to direct this film after observing your web series, “Eva vs. Anxiety,” which is hysterical but also so relatable.
I can’t tell if those videos are funny anymore. They were from a different time, another iteration of the internet.
I could easily imagine myself in one of those videos right now, having my sheet of typed questions taunting me throughout the interview.
Oh really? I’m having a great time so far. Don’t worry.
In what ways did your previous directorial work inform your approach to this first feature?
When I made those videos, I figured, ‘Everything is so humiliating that you might as well make the thing that you want to make.’ Putting videos out on the internet is such a humiliation in so many ways, but it was also the only thing that I felt I had access to. So at that point, I was like, ‘I might as well write the thing that I want to write because no one is ever going to give me the permission to do anything.’ It was an “ego death towards truth” vibe. I remember going into the edit for this film and realizing that we needed an editor who understood story, who knew how to build a film and who could create and sustain dramatic tension. The only thing that I felt comfortable with in this edit were the jokes. I understood how to edit a scene so that a joke landed more than it did when we were there. I had a little confidence with comedy editing, but then again, I was very humbled by that experience too.
I first watched your film when it premiered at Sundance in January, and when I re-watched it again a few days ago, I found that my mind had misremembered seeing the traumatic events that occur to your character in the professor’s house, which is a testament to how effectively you conveyed it all the while keeping it offscreen.
That is so interesting because my editor said a similar thing to me. He had read one draft and then I made some changes to the character of Lydie when I cast Naomi in the role. After I sent him the new draft, he was like, “You cut the part where we see what happens inside the house,” and I said, “Well, that has never, ever been in the script.” And he was like, “I’m so sorry, I really thought it had been.” That was a really interesting accidental note, and it’s a nice thing to hear from you. It shows how an audience member can immediately detect that the story Agnes recounts is true. It’s cool how her words can create a memory in the viewer’s mind that actually doesn’t exist.
All we see are the stationary shots filmed outside the house as the sun sets. Once Agnes exits, the camera follows her long walk to the car and drive home, where she delivers her shattering monologue about what she experienced.
It was always going to be like that in my mind. She goes up the doorsteps in that big wide shot of the house, and then in the script, it says, “We wait, we wait, now it’s blue hour, we wait, we wait. And then, after a certain amount of time passes, she emerges.” There was only one change we made when we were shooting it. I had a big group call with my editor and Barry where I told them why I felt that the whole sequence when Agnes is in the house needed to take place during blue hour, just after sunset. It would have required us to go back and shoot at the location three days in a row, and I was really worried that the sequence, as it stood, would lead the audience to think that too much time has passed.
Then Barry said, “We are not in reality. We are in someone’s experience of time passing,” and that relieved me. So now when I watch it, I am okay if people are thinking that more time has passed because it is about the dissociative feeling one has when their whole world has shifted. We at least have a shot during blue hour in the middle of shots filmed during daylight and then at night. It was a very deliberate choice to have those three shots all done on the same evening. Someone watched the camera while the rest of us went to dinner.
When I interviewed Peter Hedges, I was struck by his sensitivity, and that is what his son Lucas exudes so beautifully here as Gavin.
I love Peter! I had never met Lucas, I had only seen him on screen, and that’s why I wanted him so badly for this role. I was very grateful he liked the script because I didn’t really know how he would be as a person. But when I met him, he was like a walking heart. He is a few years younger than me, and is such a sensitive, warm, super-thoughtful person. It was really fun to have him play this little lamb who lives next door to Agnes and is taking care of his mom. It all fit so well with Lucas, who is such a comedian. When he came to set, he completely energized everyone. We both had to do pretty intense stuff together and he was like a new friend at that point. But we got sushi the weekend before and he was so down for the cause. I am so lucky he’s in it.
I always appreciate when male vulnerability is portrayed onscreen in a way I’ve never seen before, and that is true of the scene where Agnes asks to look at Gavin unclothed and in his flaccid state.
It was very exciting for me to give Agnes a moment alone with this thing that in other parts of her life had created such pain, but here, it’s basically asleep. She’s like, “Oh, maybe this thing isn’t as violent as I thought it was. It’s better when it’s asleep.” There’s so much pain that men have around anyone seeing it like that, and I think that is sometimes a twisted idea. What was so special to me about the character of Gavin is that he’s like an instrument toward Agnes experiencing oneness with her body again. He’s not creating the orgasm that she has when they are together. He’s there and she’s doing it in front of him. Just him being there as a witness is special, and the fact that she feels safe enough to be able to do that in front of anyone is really important for her. Then in the bath, there are some shifts that go down where he says something kind of disappointing, and he’ll never know why. He’s an instrument, but a really kind one until it’s not right for her anymore. It’s nice to talk about those moments because they feel very particular to this one character’s experience of violence and safety.
Agnes’ story reminded me of the exposé that the Chicago Reader published in 2016 about the abuse of various female actors at the city’s Profiles Theatre by its artistic director, who vanished as soon as he was outed. I saw how friends of mine, who were among the survivors, found catharsis through their art, and I imagine that must’ve been true for you in making this film.
There is a really particular experience of that kind of sexual trauma, which is that somebody has decided what your body is going to do without your permission. Realizing that someone could do, would do and did that to you is a very devastating thing. In creating this film as a director and actor, it enabled me to direct myself, which in some ways, is me deciding where my body goes at all times. If someone has an idea about where my body goes, I get to decide whether it goes there, so there’s something very powerful, in a meta way, about that experience. Also, when you’re in a scene with someone, the way to stay present is to let go, and to cede control. Collaborating is about ceding the idea of control and just trying to be as truthful as possible while letting yourself be present and free from control.
It was a really interesting journey that I am still understanding in which I basically consented to let go of control versus someone taking control without permission. I luckily got to make this film in such a safe environment with producers who really understood that the task was heavy. It was a very powerful experience to let myself be present to the point of letting go, while also knowing that we’re safe because this is play and ultimately an invention. For me, the making of the film was a very profound, intense experience of rewriting.
The score by Lia Ouyang Rusli is so captivating, I immediately looked to see if it was on Spotify. In what ways did their work match or exceed your vision for the music?
I love that question. Lia is amazing. We were not able to find a temp score that really worked at any point. We had moments that we thought felt right musically, but we couldn’t find a consistent sound. Score will often dictate tone, and can skew tone in the direction that we need it to go, depending on what you see. For instance, during the opening shot of the house, we didn’t have score there for a while, and it was giving us horror movie vibes. Then for a while, we had music there from “Donnie Darko,” which I had begged for, and everyone was like, “This is seriously scaring everyone.” Finally, I met Lia and they made this beautiful playlist of pop songs and instrumentals that felt like they inhabited the world of the movie. I immediately saw that this person genuinely, completely understood the material from the inside, and knew how it would flow. I could tell there was a gut understanding of what I was trying to do.
Then Lia started composing, and the first thing they sent me was a version of the opening music. I remember getting misty-eyed, thinking that this person would be able to elevate the film. There is some real tone-shifting in the film, and this score would ground people by creating consistency even as it’s moving. What was so powerful to me about the score were the little choral chirps that Lia incorporated, which are so playful but also very warm. Lia had done Julio’s movie “Problemista” and his TV series, “Fantasmas,” and their music for those is so different. Listening to what Lia composed for my movie, I thought, ‘This person is a genius.’ They only had a really short time to write it, honestly, and it completely changes the film.
I felt the same way when I walked into Agnes’ cottage for the first time and saw the work of my production designer, Caity Birmingham. It just felt like a home and I was amazed. What a transformative experience to have people come in and understand something so deeply that then, through their art form, can go beyond anything I could have dreamed of to make this work. There is also something incredibly profound about taking the experience of a very lonely person and making it with so many people. The film is, in its own way, a celebration of community for me, privately. It’s very affirming. And yes, that score is amazing. I’ve had a few requests to have it on Spotify and I imagine someday it will be.
What makes tonight’s screening of your film in Chicago extra-special, having graduated from Northwestern?
I walked around the campus yesterday and it was surreal to the point of insane. I had an acting teacher in college named Dawn Mora, and she has since passed away. She really was the person, when I got to school, who saw how deeply I wanted to go in my acting work, and she held me to such a high standard. She understood immediately that it was kind of life or death for me, and I don’t even know why yet. She wore these tight cheetah-printed clothes and had her hair in a pouf. Yesterday, I went into the classroom where she used to teach and I just felt so grateful. There is always that person who sees you as fully and deeply as you want to be seen at a formative time, hopefully, and she really was that person for me. So that’s what I thought about when I was on campus. I was so overcome with memories of her and the gratitude I have for her. I so badly wish that I could share the film with her, but she is special thanked, and I know that she gave me everything that I needed.
“Sorry, Baby” opens in select U.S. theaters on Friday, June 27th, before opening wide on Friday, July 18th.
