Director Maggie Gyllenhaal gave a candid reflection on themes of sexual violence in her films, saying that she was asked to tone down her new movie, The Bride!
The actress and director said this request came after screen tests of her newly released Gothic noir, which is based on 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein. She said she was “taken to task” for the sexual violence in the film.
“I was asked to take some of it out, and I did. So what you’re seeing is even a little bit pulled back from what was originally in the movie,” Gyllenhaal, 48, said on the New York Times’ podcast The Interview. She explained that because the Warner Bros. Pictures film was backed by a “big studio,” they were required to do public screenings to gauge audience reactions.
“I had a couple of women say, ‘I don’t want to see a woman being violated,’” she continued. “And I think, I also don’t want to see that. And yet that is a major reality in the culture that we’re living in—just in the time I was cutting this movie, how much wildly disturbing brutality against women there has been in the world."
“And so if we’re going to see it, we need to see it in a way that is very hard to watch, because it is very awful,” she continued.
When asked why sexual violence is a “persistent theme” in her work, Gyllenhaal pointed out her 2017 HBO drama series, The Deuce.
“Sex worker turned director of porn,” she said, describing her character on the show. “But really, she’s a woman with a mind. Like all of these movies, really, they are about women with minds.” Gyllenhaal explained that she has “spent a lot of time” thinking about this particular subject.
“I am sure that I have been thoughtful about this particular subject, and yet it will be hard to watch. I think we can take it,” she said.
The award-winning actress made her directorial debut with the independent film The Lost Daughter in 2021. But The Bride! is her first venture with a big studio like Warner Bros., resulting in a process which she said was both “difficult” and “very new.”
“My goal from the very beginning was to try to open a bigger vein, to tell the truth about something that could be heard by many people,” Gyllenhaal said of her latest film. She said Pamela Abdy, CEO of WBD, helped her in achieving this vision.
The Bride! stars Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale. The cast is rounded out by Peter Sarsgaard, Gyllenhaal’s husband, Jake Gyllenhaal, her brother, Annette Bening, and Penélope Cruz.
Gyllenhaal’s film, made on an $80 million budget, is eyeing a $40 million global start, according to Deadline. The gothic noir has so far received mixed reviews, sitting at just 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager called it a “distinctly disjointed affair.”
The film, which was already released in France and South Korea earlier this week, will premiere in U.S. theaters this Friday, Mar. 6.
