Director Kelly Fremon Craig is no stranger to awkward teen experiences. Her 2016 feature film “The Edge of Seventeen” leaned heavily on the story of a teenage girl, played by Hailee Steinfeld, coming into her own with all the embarrassment that accompanies that age. But Fremon Craig’s follow-up was a challenge: adapting a well-loved and iconic piece of literature for the big screen, Judy Blume’s 1970 novel “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”
The story of 11-year-old Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) and her blossoming into adulthood has inspired a litany of teen girls for decades, especially as the novel is frank in its discussions of puberty and the m-word: menstruation. For Fremon Craig, before she could even pen word one of the script she had to secure the permission of author Blume, who was notoriously protective of “Margaret” specifically. “I reached out to her and really poured my heart out about how much she meant to me,” Craig told TheWrap. “When I was growing up she really was the person who made me fall in love with reading. Prior to her it wasn’t my thing at all.”
Fremon Craig had a connection to all of Blume’s works, but “Margaret” was the one she desperately wanted to adapt. “I called Jim Brooks,” Fremon Craig said. “I sent him the book and I said ‘let’s passionately pitch doing this as a film.’ We flew out and and met her at her home in Key West and it was passionately talking about ‘Margaret’ and talking about the fact that I don’t know that I’ve ever seen female adolescence dealt with with such specific honesty.” The director had little reason to believe Blume would go for the idea but by the time Fremon Craig and Brooks were on the plane home, the author agreed.
Fremon Craig went on to talk about making the film, the way teens are presented on-screen today, and why she was initially embarrassed pitching the movie to executives.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
We’re so used to seeing teens played by twentys–omethings. What was it like casting actual 11-year-olds for this?
Kelly Fremon Craig: The casting process was seeing every kid under the sun and really looking places that you don’t expect, trying to find kids from all over. A lot of the kids, this was their first ever thing. The girl who plays Gretchen [Katherine Mallen Kupferer], this is the first thing she’s ever done and she’s just wonderful, such a gifted comedian. She’s so gifted at improvising. There’s something about kids [who] are really just kids. They haven’t been shaped by being in a bunch of things since they were really young. There’s that real quality of a regular, everyday kid that I wanted to be sure the film had. It didn’t feel like it was being played by perfect, Disney-fied actor kids.
How do you look at the depiction of adolescence on-screen in general?
I remember adolescence being very messy and complicated. I feel like when I look back there was this moment, this turn in my life. I feel like for the first several years of childhood I had no self consciousness. There was a point when self consciousness was birthed, but before that I was just two eyeballs looking out at the world and my whole sense of self was everything that was in front of me. Then, at some point, and I think it was around 11 I suddenly realized, “Oh, my God, there’s also a whole bunch of eyeballs looking back at me. How do I feel about that? What are they thinking? Do I look okay? How am I compared to the next person? Am I normal?”
I’ve thought a lot about why am I so fascinated by this? I think it has to do with some awareness of self that happened that was particularly painful. I always wish I could go back to those feelings before that because once it’s there it never goes away. When we filmed the first montage at summer camp, part of what I really wanted to capture was that time in your life when you’re just completely free, and you’ve got your hair matted across your face, and popsicle dripping down your mouth and you don’t know, and you don’t care. You’re just fully in the moment.
Was there any pushback or hesitation in getting this movie made considering how shy we are as a society talking about periods?
I had the strange experience of having optioned the book, and then, all of a sudden, you’re in a room full of executives, male executives and agents talking about the book and saying the word “period.” I found myself even at 40 being embarrassed saying the word. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. Then, at some point, it was like, what is that in me that I am embarrassed to say this out loud? What is it in me that when I would buy tampons I’d be like, “Oh, God will let me pick the lady instead of the man.” This is something half the population goes through and yet I’m being weird and embarrassed about it.
Did the male executives understand the importance of the book? What was the response?
Everybody tried to be cool about it, not act weird. But also, it started to shift as I started to shift because when I said the word enough I just became desensitized. That’s actually what happened to most of us over the course of making the movie. What I hope has happened to the younger generation is that there’s no weirdness at all about it. Now I talk about all of it all the time and I have not even a hint of embarrassment about any of it.
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” hits theaters April 28.
