Sundance 2020: Interview With PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN Actor Bo Burnham

The last time Bo Burnham was at the Sundance Film Festival, he was nervously promoting his directorial feature debut Eighth Grade to packed theatres across the snowy city. The film went on to be critically acclaimed, with audiences lauding it as a nuanced depiction of social anxiety.

He now finds himself back at the festival in a slightly less stressful position, playing a role in Emerald Fennell‘s directorial effort, Promising Young Woman. The film will certainly be a divisive piece of cinema for most viewers, and Burnham turns in an impressive performance in his biggest acting role to date.

Wilson Kwong for Film Inquiry: Since this was your first acting role since you directed Eighth Grade, was the acting experience any different now that you’ve directed a film yourself?

Bo Burnham: I don’t know how I changed. I had a small part in The Big Sick and just small parts before that, so this is definitely my most significant role. But I’m definitely not on set thinking like a director or anything because there’s so much to worry about as an actor, to just appear like a human being.

I remember my process of directing actors and thinking the actors that worked best for the film were the ones that just trusted me 100%. And so I said, “I’m going to just trust Emerald [Fennell] completely.” Because when I was directing, I did not like it when actors were thinking, “Oh, I wonder how the light’s hitting me,” or whatever. You just leave that to me, and you act and just be you. So I just tried to fully put myself in Emerald’s hands.

Having been both an actor and director now, do you prefer one over the other?

Bo Burnham: They’re so different. One is so consuming and took two years of my life and the other was two weeks of shooting. I really enjoyed both. They’re just very different, but they’re also within the world of film, and I just love working on film and collaborating with people. So yeah, I don’t know.

Compared to when you were at Sundance in 2018 with Eighth Grade, how different is this current experience with Promising Young Woman?

Bo Burnham: It’s strange. It’s less nerve-wracking, but I think also more nerve-wracking because it’s my own face on screen.

Your character (and face!) definitely plays a big part in Promising Young Woman, but I also want to make sure we don’t spoil anything as we delve into the film itself. Just watching the trailer initially, it seems like this might be a typical rape revenge horror movie. But it’s clearly more than that, so in your mind, what makes this film unique?

Bo Burnham: It’s ironic because by maybe not fulfilling perfectly what the thriller usually does, I think it is thrilling, and that maybe thrillers have become less thrilling because they become rote and predictable. But it’s a challenging movie that will take deeply unexpected turns and will make you feel a lot, question a lot and think a lot. That’s at least how I felt when I read the script, and I’ve watched it a couple of times now and each time’s a little different. Certain things hit me hard and it’s a challenging movie. So if people are just expecting a wall-to-wall cathartic butt-kicking sort of film, it certainly isn’t that.

Given the subject matter of the story and knowing that a lot of people who watch the film might have very personal and visceral reactions to it, was this something that you thought about a lot during your performance?

Bo Burnham: It wasn’t, just because I felt like if that was something to be attended to, it shouldn’t be attended to by me. Emerald is much more qualified to do that and the best I can do is just be as honest and truthful as I possibly can. And I felt for my character, for reasons I don’t want to say, it was very important that I just made him as accessible as I could. That’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to try to externalize him. And it’s also important that my character’s very unaware of what the movie is around him, so I had to just stay out of my head and leave that work to the people whose work it was to figure out all that stuff.

Without getting into any spoilers, what were some of the challenges you faced with this particular role?

Bo Burnham: Just being a romantic lead is difficult. It’s just difficult to have to charm someone, in the same way it’s just difficult in life to flirt. Flirting is so hard, let alone flirting with a goddamn camera on you. You know what I mean?

For sure, especially when it’s with Carey Mulligan.

Bo Burnham: Exactly, that was tough! But the good thing was that Emerald wanted my version of that [relationship], which is why when I did my chemistry read with Carey, she was like, “That’s good, because your character should be intimidated by Cassandra [Carey Mulligan’s character in the film].” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s a choice I’m making.” Of course, I was just actually intimidated. So the good thing was that I could just bring all my nerves about the part to the performance and it would make sense in theory.

How do you think people are going to react to this movie?

Bo Burnham: I don’t know. It went well last night, which was really lovely to see. But I really don’t know. I think people will react, which is good, and I don’t think they’ll react uniformly. Which at least form the art that I like, is the most exciting; the stuff that is maybe a little contentious or divisive and starts conversations. I love having arguments with my friends about movies, passionately disagreeing about something.

One thing that must be difficult about promoting this movie, especially in the age of social media, is keeping everything a secret. With that in mind, how has the process of promoting the film been for you, especially on social media?

Bo Burnham: I don’t know, I haven’t been tweeting too much. I’ve been off social media for a while now, so maybe I’ll have to get back on it when this comes out, but I’ve been trying to disengage with that a little bit. It’s been breaking my brain a little, so I’ve been trying to stay out of it.

And what about through interviews like this?

Bo Burnham: That is a difficult part for sure, and it’s just about weighing the benefits. I certainly also don’t want people to be totally f*cking blindsided by it. I get excited and it’s not my film, but I think people should know it’s a pretty challenging watch that’s also very entertaining. And I also feel like I’m just the guy that’s acting in it, so it’s not my story to helm or navigate or steer.

Being an actor on the film, and not being part of the bigger scheme of its story or narrative, what do you hope audiences will take away from the film?

Bo Burnham: I genuinely would just hope they like it, it’s really that simple. I hope they like it, and that they find it interesting and watchable. But I feel just as much like an audience member now than someone who was in it. It’s because the movie is so much more complex than the movie I was shooting since I was just in this one role. So when I saw the movie for the first time, I thought, “Whoa.” You know? Because I really tried to shut out all that stuff when I was acting and just focus on my own stuff, so I really feel much more like an audience member than I even do a cast member right now.

I wanted to end off by talking about how your work always seems to be pretty socially conscious. Whether it’s your earlier stuff on YouTube, your stand-up comedy and now your work in film, you always seem to tackle serious social issues. Is this something you search for intentionally?

Bo Burnham: I’m not sure, maybe a little bit. For comedy, maybe the social stuff was slightly more interesting to me than the observational stuff. But I’d rather try to find a path to social things through the personal stuff, like I did with Eighth Grade, which I guess has some social stuff floating around it. The older I get, the more I feel like all I know is the very specific stuff. And the things and the pieces of work that have made me think about stuff socially tend to be things that are very, very personal. I think if you can go through a personal lens into a social implication, that’s when it resonates the most and can actually get under people’s skin.

Promising Young Woman premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2020, and is coming to theaters in April 2020.