The Daily
'The Interview': Maggie Gyllenhaal Thinks Hollywood Likes Women to Direct ‘Little Movies’
28 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Wesley Morris. I'm a critic for The New York Times, and I'm the host of a podcast called Cannonball. We're going to talk about that song you can't get out of your head, that TV show you watched and can't stop thinking about, and the movie that you saw when you were a kid that made you who you are, whether you like it or not.
I was so embarrassed the whole time because it's a bad film, and I still love it. You can find Cannonball on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. Maggie Gyllenhaal has always had this kind of fascination with the darker side of sex and love. Her breakout role as a young actor came with her award-winning performance in the 2002 film Secretary, where she's a troubled woman who embarks on a sadomasochistic relationship with her boss.
In Crazy Heart, she played a young mother who falls in love with an older alcoholic country singer. That role earned her an Oscar nomination. And in the series The Deuce, she starred as a sex worker who becomes a director of pornographic films. That last role made her want to be a director in real life, too.
And so in 2021, she won acclaim with her feature directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, about the taboo feelings some women feel over motherhood. For me, the through line in all her work is a desire to tell the stories of women who live outside conventional boundaries.
Enter her newest film, The Bride, an imaginative retelling of the story of the Bride of Frankenstein, starring Jesse Buckley, which Gyllenhaal both wrote and directed. The film is part love story, part crime caper, with some surreal musical numbers thrown in. But Gyllenhaal's signature themes of sexual violence, female power, and transgression undergird it all.
Here's my conversation with Maggie Gyllenhaal. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you coming to the interview. It really is my pleasure. You know, it's interesting to me because I interviewed you in 2019 for The Deuce. And in that interview, you said to me, playing that role where she, your character, becomes a director of pornography, but a director nonetheless.
It's like a real journey. You said that that had made you realize that you would also be a director. Mm-hmm. And I was wondering, now sitting here with this big budget movie, you know, where you're at in that kind of evolution.
I mean, I feel like I'm deeply like in process. That's how I feel. You know, I feel like, like I knew I was going on a major journey starting The Bride and I was scared. I was actually terrified. And to be honest, I remember, I mean, I don't know. It's interesting that I'm sharing this, but like, I remember being at Venice with Peter. Peter Sarsgaard, your husband.
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Chapter 2: What themes does Maggie Gyllenhaal explore in her films?
And I remember feeling so anxious and getting up and going to the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, oh, I don't have to direct this.
Yeah.
But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't. Hmm. But I feel having come out the other side and only really having finished it in October, it's February now, like I went on a trip. I learned so much. And now I'm on the trip of putting it out into the world.
Well, let's talk about The Bride because I think it's an incredible film. And it tells the story of the Bride of Frankenstein's monster. And you have said that you were inspired by the 1930s movie original. This is almost a century later. Why are we still so interested in monsters and Frankenstein? And what was it for you that seemed so enduring about that story?
Yeah, I mean... I think we have monstrous aspects inside of us, each of us, all of us. I do believe that. And I think we can spend our lives running from those really, truly monstrous aspects of ourselves, or we can turn around and shake hands with them. And that's terrifying. And that's the kind of monstrousness I was curious about and interested in.
Frankenstein as a piece of cultural mythology, I actually hadn't read the book. I mean, I'll tell you how it all came to me. I was getting kind of pitched IP after The Lost Daughter. You know, like, maybe you want to do a... Marvel movie or whatever. Right, or something. And I had made this little tiny movie about... really left alone, like almost entirely.
It was cheap enough that, and it was COVID and they sort of forgot about us. That's what I think when I look back on it. But it made an impact. And I thought, I don't know how many more opportunities I'll have to make a film. I want to do something bigger. And I also thought The Lost Daughter hit a little vein in
where other people could relate to something that hadn't been talked about that much before. And I thought, what if you could do the same thing, but like on a pop level, on like a big level?
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Chapter 3: How did Maggie Gyllenhaal transition from acting to directing?
What would happen? This was my question to myself. And as I was thinking about this and thinking, okay, I better think of something quick because who knows how long I'll be able to finance a movie.
Yeah.
I saw this guy with a Bride of Frankenstein tattoo on his arm, that Elsa Lanchester hairdo profile. And I was like, who is that again? And I looked her up and I was like, oh yeah, her. Whoa. She's got some like wild energy. Just the image. I hadn't seen the movie. I watched the movie and I was like, oh, The Bride of Frankenstein is a Frankenstein movie.
There's almost nothing to do with The Bride of Frankenstein. She's like a prop. She's in it for three minutes, less maybe, and she doesn't say one word. But somehow she has entered the cultural mythology, even though she doesn't get to speak. And I do... I don't know. My fantasy, it's just my fantasy, and I've been taken to task for this, is that I don't know if Mary Shelley...
got everything she wanted to say out with Frankenstein. I love the book.
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Chapter 4: What is the story behind Gyllenhaal's film 'The Bride'?
The book is brilliant, obviously. You know, it's one of like, what, five books published that were written by women in the 19th century? I know I'm exaggerating, but like, you know, not easy to do. And so how did she have to censor herself in order to get that book published? That's my kind of, that's one major question in the movie.
This is, you know, quite a violent film. It's visceral. It's bloody. I'm wondering what you were tapping into with that.
Yeah, I have kind of a lot to say about this, actually. I've been thinking about this. Yes, there's sexual violence. There's violence, violence, violence. Because it's a big studio movie, we tested and tested it. We had big screenings in malls and stuff where people came to see it, which I had never been a part of as an actress or a director before. Oh, interesting.
So fascinating. I want to hear about that, but finish this.
No, I'm going to. But one of the things that was brought up was the violence. Is it too violent? By the people going to see it? Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was talking about it with a girlfriend of mine who said she wasn't being reductive. She's just like, I'm just curious. I just wonder if you had been a man making this movie, if you would have had the same response. Just straight violence.
Yeah, I'm thinking of a lot of directors off the top of my head whose signature is that kind of violence, right?
And 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. Mm-hmm. And one of the things I think that was important to me is that everybody who is killed, is hurt, we at least for a moment get to know them.
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Chapter 5: Why is the Bride of Frankenstein a significant character in film history?
I was like 33. That Masha and Vershinin and three sisters were like the love affair of all time. And that is not what my husband thought.
So you totally understood it differently.
I was like, what? Why are you so withholding? Why? Why make that choice? And I was hurt personally by the artistic choice he was making. But Penny, our mutual teacher that I was mentioning before— She said to me, that play is when I really started to learn how to work. And she was like, you may wish that that's the relationship that you had. Okay, so now Masha wishes that.
But that is not the relationship that you're actually having to contend with on stage. So contend with that relationship. So that was great and both exciting and difficult. Then we did The Last Daughter where he has like a really hot love affair with Jesse Buckley. Yes, he does. Which was very complicated too. And at first I almost didn't give him the part. Because of that?
I was like, I don't need that also, along with directing a movie for the first time and How did you talk through that? I actually offered it to somebody else first. Wow. And I knew he was hurt, even though we hadn't really talked about him playing it. We might have. And I remember speaking to both my best girlfriend and to this teacher, and both of them were like, you can't manage this?
Can you really not? And I was like, no, I think I can actually. I think I can. I think I can manage it. And I actually really want Peter to play this part. And what was it actually like?
Hmm.
Oh my God, it was so many things. I mean, it was like, he was so good in The Lost Daughter. He was so brilliant. And so was Jesse. And watching them together and egging them each on from a very like unconnected emotionally place. Okay, try this, try this. Not just in the sex, but in the, I mean, this wasn't at all about the sex. This was about the courtship, which was so hot.
And pushing them and pushing them and watching them create as, like real actors have to like create the love, do it. It's okay. So they did that. I watched them do that. I'm like, Okay. When I get like a second to stop, it's a little hard, but we have to keep going. We have to keep going. Then we get to like the sexy stuff. And I remember my cinematographer, who was amazing.
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Chapter 6: What are the challenges of depicting violence in film?
It's fun to beat friends and coworkers.
New York Times game subscribers get full access to Crossplay, our first two-player word game. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games. So good to see you again. Yeah, you too. So I went back after our interview and I rewatched The Dark Knight after we talked because it was on my mind since we spoke a lot about you taking on this sort of big budget movie. Mm-hmm.
And I guess that movie had to have been the biggest budget film you were ever a part of. I mean, it was probably like such a huge event. And I was kind of wondering what that experience taught you about how to harness all those resources from inside the studio system.
Well, I mean, acting in it is in a big, huge budget movie is very different than directing one. What I did think was it's hard to be free. in a movie of that size because there are so many other aspects as an actor, so many other aspects that can sometimes feel like they take precedent. VFX, the massive day, the 400 extras, whatever it is. And
Heath Ledger really, really managed to find that humanity and freedom inside of that really big movie. And I will say that that was one of the most important things to me on The Bride was to create real freedom for all of the artists who were working on it, not just my actors. That was a major priority for me.
I guess I am curious about your own experience where that wasn't what happened to you. Yeah.
I would say as an actress, to be honest, it is way more rare to find an environment, a situation where you feel seen, respected, and loved than one where you don't. Yeah, that's my experience. But I had to learn how to do it without it. And I see so many actors walk on set with that mindset. I do. I feel like many actors walk on set like, okay, I'm probably going to get nothing here.
And I think that I have such a wish and a hope for interaction and connection. And I think I often had to let go of having that in a really deep way with a director. I mean, there are exceptions. And there are times when I had it and those people... I did my best work with them, probably.
I mean, I worked with Mike Nichols for one day as an actress in a reading of a play that we did on stage in New York. And he gave me probably one of the best directions I've ever received. And I knew that he wanted my mind in this. I was playing Marie Curie. He said, he sort of took me aside after the first read through and he said, come here. He said, just one thing. She's feral.
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