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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us.

A new film that debuted at Sundance screened at South by Southwest and is coming to New York City this weekend is called The Starling Girl. It's a story that examines the push and pull of sexuality and shame within a fundamentalist Christian community. Our protagonist is 17-year-old Jem Starling, the eldest of many siblings growing up fundamentalist in rural Kentucky.

She's beginning to follow certain urges but has internalized that desire as sinful. She finds a way to express herself in a church dance troupe and spends time with her church youth group. It's there that she becomes enraptured with the pastor's son, a youth group leader, Owen, who is in his 20s and married. He's just come back from a missionary trip in Puerto Rico. Owen and Jem begin an inappropriate relationship that, when discovered, means she could lose everything, her faith and her family for good.

The Starling Girl is the debut feature from writer and director, Laurel Parmet, and stars Eliza Scanlen as Jem. You likely know her from her roles and projects like Little Women and Sharp Objects. The Hollywood Reporter says, "The Starling Girl is a complex, often disturbing portrait of the way women have been pressured to shrink themselves and pass on that shame to their daughters." The film premieres in New York theaters on Friday and will expand on May 19th. I'm joined now by writer and director, Laurel Parmet. Hi Laurel.

Laurel Parmet: Hi.

Alison Stewart: And actor, Eliza Scanlen. Eliza, nice to meet you.

Eliza Scanlen: Hi. Nice to meet you too.

Alison Stewart: Laurel, this film was developed through Sundance. How did that come about, and what did that mean for you as a filmmaker?

Laurel Parmet: I developed the film at Sundance's Feature Film program. It was honestly one of the best experiences that I've had as a filmmaker. I mean, being welcomed into the Sundance family, it was really very, very meaningful for me. Sundance really walks the walk. There's a lot of institutional support out there if you're lucky to get it, but Sundance was really helpful every step of the way, from workshoping the script to helping us produce the film and, or rather guiding us as we were producing the film and securing financing. It's really-- Sorry, that's my dog.

[laughs]

Alison Stewart: We like dogs in this show.

Laurel Parmet: It was a very gratifying experience and one that I've wanted my whole life as a filmmaker to have that institutional support from them. Yes, it was very meaningful.

Alison Stewart: Eliza, when you read the role of Jem, what was something about this character that made you realize, "Oh, I'm going to get to stretch a little bit. I'm going to get to do something or investigate something that I haven't before in my career"?

Eliza Scanlen: That's a good question. I think that when I was reading the script, what first drew me to Jem was her fiery spirit. In a world like this, that's not something that I guess you expect to find in a character. It does explore a moral grey area, this film. Jem has a complicated relationship with her faith, especially after meeting Owen. I was really excited to explore her oscillation between her desire for Owen, her guilt and confusion regarding her faith, her feelings of shame. It was just such a interesting myriad of experiences that I was able to explore with this character, so it was really exciting for me to play.

Laurel Parmet: Yes, she has all the emotions.

Alison Stewart: She does.

Laurel Parmet: All of them.

[laughs]

Alison Stewart: It's in a very emotional film.

Laurel Parmet: She loves to cry.

Alison Stewart: Sometimes two or three at the same time, which I can imagine.

[laughs]

Laurel Parmet: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Laurel, you've said in your director's statement that when you were a teenager, you had a relationship with an older man. What did you want to capture from that experience in this film?

Laurel Parmet: It was important to me that-- it's funny. In the situation that I had, I didn't see myself as a victim at the time. I still go back and forth on it. I don't often know how to feel about it and I've made peace that that's okay to not know. It was important that Jem has agency to me. Without question, Owen is in the wrong, using his authority to seduce her, but at the same time, yes, Jem has agency and she pursues him. That's why the film is told entirely from her perspective so that we experience the relationship how she experiences it.

She finds self-worth in Owen's connection and enjoys exploring her sexuality and so sometimes we'll root for that relationship, though we know that it's wrong. I wanted the audience to understand why Jem could fall for Owen and, at times, maybe have the audience fall for him too, and then be like, "Oh God, wait, why did I want that?" That oscillation, that ride that we take the audience on, was fun to figure out and important for us.

The scenes where, like, at the beginning of the scene, you're rooting for them to get together, and then in the middle or the end of the scene, you're like, "Oh, wait, God, no, this is terrible. I'm repulsed," and that's Jem's journey. It was so important for the audience to be with Jem and for it to feel like we are with her moment to moment and feel that immediacy.

Alison Stewart: Eliza, of course, an important part of this whole story is where it takes place, the community within where the story takes place. When you were getting ready for this project. When you were researching it, what is it about Christian fundamentalism that you wanted to know more about to be prepared to play Jem?

Eliza Scanlen: We had the support of two consultants, which was extremely helpful for both Lewis and I to understand the community. I think I was most interested in some of the practice. It's different for each church, but some of the practices that they engaged in and the teachings that they received.

I was particularly interested in the dancing aspect and understanding more where that comes from. In the film, it's quite interesting how dancing in this world is. It's an expression of your love for God, an expression of your faith. Yet at the same time, you can't enjoy it too much because it might interfere with your relationship with God because God is always meant to be your priority. It feels contradictory in a way, and I guess I wanted to understand a bit more about that

Yes, we were very lucky to have those consultants helping us make sense of it. It was important for us to not look at this world from an outsider's perspective, but treat it with compassion and understanding.

Laurel Parmet: Yes. We didn't want to mock or condescend to these communities. It's not blaspheming God. It's more offering a complex look at religion and faith, and maybe suggesting even that there are many ways to connect with God, and maybe God lives in Jem's desires and in her questions, and that's okay.

Alison Stewart: We're discussing the film, The Starling Girl, which opens in New York theaters on Friday. I'm speaking with actor, Eliza Scanlen, and writer-director, Laurel Parmet.

In one of the earliest scenes in the film, Laurel, it really helps with a little bit with the world-building and helping us as the viewer understand it, is that Jem is basically shamed for having her bra show through her shirt a little bit. It is barely showing through her shirt. It's just a little bit of imprint. Why did you want to have that happen so early in the film?

How does this help set up the movie and the story we're about to follow?

Laurel Parmet: Yes, I mean, listen, it's- from a practical storytelling standpoint, it's visual. I always will gravitate towards ways to visually tell the audience something. Yes, it is a woman's responsibility in these communities to not lead a man into temptation, and that extends to every part of her. It's something that women spend many hours of their day thinking about, like getting dressed in the morning, looking in the mirror and doing a checklist of like, "Is my skirt long enough," or "Is anything too clingy?"

It just takes up so much space in a woman's brain in these communities. I think that was an important thing to show that, again, no matter what age you are, it's a woman's responsibility to not lead a man into temptation.

Alison Stewart: Let's play a clip from the film, The Starling Girl, and we can talk about it on the other side. As we've mentioned, this relationship between Jem who's 17, and Owen, who's in his late 20s, and is married, played by Lewis Pullman, who Eliza mentioned earlier. Jem is very much pursuing Owen, and is instigating the relationship in many ways. Let's listen to a clip for one of their early interactions.

This is Jem approaching Owen as he works in a garden, asking him if she can lead the youth dance troupe. This is from The Starling Girl.

Jem: What if we got one of the older women to sign off on everything, make sure the moves are worshipful, God-focused?

Owen: A bunch of teen girls coming up with their own dance. You know how much grief I'd get?

Jem: You'd freak everyone out.

Owen: All right, so who'd be in charge?

Gem: Well, I've been in the troop for a while.

Owen: All right. Yes, your dad's got to be cool with it.

Gem: Your shoe.

Owen: Oh. Thanks.

Alison Stewart: She's just leaned down to tie his shoe.

Laurel Parmet: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Eliza, when you're thinking about this, why is Jem so drawn to Owen? What is it about him?

Eliza Scanlen: Well, there's an allure to Owen at this point, and because he's just come back from Puerto Rico--

Laurel Parmet: On a missionary trip?

Eliza Scanlen: On a missionary trip. There's this general allure to him, but I think Jem is especially drawn to him because he appears to be just as lost, maybe as she is in some ways. They do have immediately, this a bit of a kindred connection. You can hear that in the dialogue, I guess, her saying that he'd freak everyone out. The subtext, it seems to suggest that they're both outsiders in a way, and I think Jem is drawn to him for that reason.

Laurel Parmet: He came back from this missionary trip and he experienced new parts of the world and new ways of faith and connecting with God, and so he has these new ideas about who God is, that challenge the existing narrative in their community about control and shame. His knowledge and his experience outside of their community is definitely a big part of what draws her to him. He represents possibility.

Alison Stewart: Eliza, I want to ask you about the voice work, getting the accent right and getting the cadence right.

Laurel Parmet: Isn't it so good?

[laughter]

Eliza Scanlen: I do love accents, so this was very fun. I love the O's in the Kentucky accent.

Laurel Parmet: I know, they're so good. You got those down so well.

Alison Stewart: Wait, Eliza, tell me about a Kentucky O.

Eliza Scanlen: I don't know, it's just a hope and no, and love. I don't know. I just love doing accents. I've done different kinds of southern accents before, but I think the Kentucky accent is the most fun.

Laurel Parmet: [chuckles] When everyone who doesn't know that Eliza is Australian, when they find out that she's Australian, they're like, "What? No way."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: This was originally supposed to be set in a- or you wanted it to be set in Oklahoma, right, Laurel, but we ended up in-- we. You ended up being filmed in-

Laurel Parmet: We.

Alison Stewart: -Kentucky. The royal we.

Laurel Parmet: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Did anything have to change about the story or the script as you changed location?

Laurel Parmet: A little bit, just to make the film feel specific to the location. There were talks at one point of like-- Yes, originally, it was written for Oklahoma because I spent a lot of time in Oklahoma and I met a group of women in a fundamentalist community in Oklahoma, and did a lot of my research there. Then when we couldn't shoot there, we thought, "Oh, well, should we just still set it in Oklahoma but shoot it in Kentucky?"

Then I was like, no, we want the film to feel as authentic as possible, and the surest way of doing that is to set the film and the location that we're shooting it in. Changing accent work, it was making things a little bit more specific to Kentucky, in production design, and in characters. It wasn't a huge stretch to make those changes. There are communities like this all over the country, so it could have very easily taken place in other parts of the country as well, but I wanted it to be set in a conservative southern/midwestern state.

Alison Stewart: Was there a detail from that time you spent with those women in Oklahoma or in your research that really helped you shape the story or shape some part of your direction?

Laurel Parmet: Yes. What I would say, one of the things that I don't know that I anticipated so much going into the research was how much I came to really admire faith and a lot of the tenets of Christianity. Eliza touched on this a little bit, but it was really important to us to come to these communities from not mocking or condescending to, and so we wanted to showcase visually some of the beauty of these tight-knit communities rather than just leaning into the oppressive aspects.

That extended to every part of the filmmaking, from the casting, to the locations that we chose, locations that were-- working with the production designer and creating spaces that felt warm, and welcoming, and light-filled, and focusing on the lush beauty of Kentucky to just show this other side and the beauty of faith. Also, to really echo what's going on internally for Jem. She's going through something exciting and beautiful and then opening up.

Obviously, there's a lot of, that's really messed up in this too, unfortunately, but we wanted to echo this thing that she's getting swept up in. I think the beauty also really helps to balance some of the film's heavy emotional weight and helps us to avoid really making those emotional bits feel over raw and melodramatic.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is The Starling Girl. It will be in New York City theaters and New York theaters on Friday. It's expanding on the 19th. I've been speaking with actor Eliza Scanlen, and writer-director, Laurel Parmet. Thank you for making time today.

Laurel Parmet: Yes, thank you. This was such a pleasure.

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