The name Hannah Einbinder will likely ring bells for fans of TV juggernaut Hacks, in which she plays floundering comedy writer Ava, as well as being the star of her own 2024 comedy special, Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go. Now she stars in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma opposite Gillian Anderson in the newest film from one of the hottest directors in town, Jane Schoenbrun. It offers a puckish deconstruction of horror-movie lore while also having the actor play a sneaky version of the director.
LWLies: One of the moments in the film that I related to the most is when your character Kris says she watched too many scary movies growing up, and it fucked her up. I had a very similar young person experience. I was wondering if you were a kid who grew up watching too many scary movies?
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Einbinder: I definitely watched a scary movie too young, which put me off for years, and then I returned. But that was Silent Hill. Really scary, especially for a little girl because it’s about getting lost and your mom not being able to find you. It’s kind of classic little girl stress for me, and it’s really scary. And all of the characters are so crazy, like shark heads. But I do love horror. I feel like most of my zone has been ecological horror or psychological horror. I love all the Stephen King movies, big John Carpenter fan, Cronenberg, also the supernatural shit. The Exorcist is huge for me. The Grudge. And there are some great slashers. That was actually my biggest blind spot of all of the subgenres, so Jane put me on to some great stuff. But yeah, comedy-horror, of course. Housebound, one of my favorites. So yeah, just kind of all over the map. I didn’t realise until I started talking about this movie and started doing the film how much horror I had actually seen and loved. I was like, ‘Oh damn! I guess I am kind of into this.’
I’m curious to know about the films that Jane put you onto.
They gave me some recommendations, some tonal and performance references. Persona, Secretary, The Duke of Burgundy, Crash, and then, of course, Halloween, The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre, a lot of slasher stuff. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, Carrie. I took it upon myself to expand the list in places. I felt like The Shining was fun, just for the sort of chase element. Yeah, the list goes on. But it’s just been so fun to discover, especially the psychosexual canon.
Oh yeah, The Duke of Burgundy is a great pull. Fantastic film.
Must watch.
Can you tell me a little bit more about that creative process for approaching Kris?
It’s very body-forward for me. I put on the clothes. Speaking of Secretary, there is one of the outfits in the film – multiple, in fact – but there is a main outfit that’s directly inspired by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character in Secretary, where she’s got these long socks and a long skirt and these little Mary Jane shoes. So I was like, yeah, she’s trying to cover up. I think it was important for Kris to really be trying to cover up, especially because my body – my actual body, and thus Kris’s body – is very much inherently sexualised because of the way my body is shaped. So I think Kris would want to cover that. That was important to me, that she was very uncomfortable. After those fittings and picking the glasses – which was so crucial – and all of that stuff, I think that helped me really lock into the physical manifestations of her discomfort. I also stole some mannerisms from Jane. Jane has a couple… some of the hand stuff is Jane, and some of the glasses-pushing Jane also will do. Just spending time with Jane, I was kind of stealing things left and right. A lot of it is on the page. So for me, I didn’t make a mood board per se, but I did come in with, ‘Oh, here are some references,’ because I also wanted Kris to feel like an amalgamation of the films she’s seen. I don’t know if you clocked it, but she has a tattoo here.
I did see it, but I couldn’t look at what it said.
It’s a battle axe. It’s a smaller version of Gina Gershon’s battle axe in Bound.
Oh my God, that’s so cool.
I fear she would have a filmy tattoo. It’s just small, right here in the scene by the fire, the intimate scene. I was like, yeah, that would be really cool. Just things like that. How can I make her feel distinct? I cut some little bangs for it, I just tried to feel different.
Especially because obviously you’ve worked for so many years. By that point, it’s like these are two queer women working in the entertainment space. How can I make myself differentiate? Obviously they’re moving in completely different spaces, but you want it to feel like this person is in no way the same. They do feel like such different people.
Thank you. Yes. Of course, we all know the spectrum of how we – newsflash – queer people, like everyone else, can be very different. We are not a monolith. I wanted to make sure that I was representing these two people who, on paper, perhaps have similarities, but are really nothing alike at all. Ava walks in, dick swinging, to every room. She’s a bulldozer. Kris could just barely be email-spreading. Ava’s grip would be… ah.
Yeah, that’s someone with a firm handshake.
Yeah. I would love to see those two girls in a room.
Oh, I’m sure the fanfic writers will get right on it. You don’t have to wait.
That’s unbelievable. So funny. Oh my God. I have not thought about that.
I’m sorry for putting that in your head.
It’s amazing. It’s the funniest thing I could ever imagine. I guess, though, the more specific you are with the performance, the more relatable it becomes because people recognize those tiny idiosyncrasies. Watching the film, it’s like, ‘Yeah, I recognise the way that you pull your sleeves. I recognise the cover-up thing.’ Now you’ve said it, it makes so much sense because, for myself, as a queer woman growing up and being confronted, as young as eight, with people making comments on your body, you do have that impulse to be like, ‘Okay, how can I hide away from the world?’ Then, in my case, you get older and you get angrier, and then you develop an interest in horror because it’s everything you feel being expressed ten times over, which I think the film does so beautifully.
The kind of art that Jane is putting out there really feels like nothing else at the moment. Obviously it’s incredibly special to the queer community, the trans community, the sapphic community, but I’d love to know what appealed to you about the prospect of working with Jane.
Yeah. I think it is knowing just how much of Jane’s personal experience is imbued in their films. For me, getting to work with someone who is so genuinely vulnerable in their work and does not shy away from things that are difficult was so thrilling. To read the script and laugh, too, felt like, ‘Oh, I’m getting to be a part of this incredible moment for this person of coming into their joy and loving themselves.’ Someone I admire and feel close to on a parasocial level through their work, and then getting to actually get close to them and feel that connection and meet the version of them that wrote this film – that was so appealing When we first had these meetings, before Jane told me that I had the part, I just was loving hanging out with them. It became such an intimate process that I just felt so lucky to witness.
Yeah. The film is so joyful. I think that’s maybe one of the things that surprised me about it because Jane’s previous work has been pretty dark and pretty tragic in places.
Well, I think the thing that it is hitting on is super universal. I think the central subject matter of the film is about liberation from shame and embracing desire and confronting dissociation and discomfort in your body. That is the most human thing, I think, ever since Eve ate the fucking apple. You know what I mean? That is so universal. While, yes, the film explores that topic through a woman and a non-binary person in a sapphic dynamic, I think it is not only humanising our community and our experience, but, in doing that, helping people to relate to us and to themselves.
How would you define Jane’s directing style? It was a pretty short shoot, from what I gather, and I imagine it was you and Gillian for most of it.
For most of it, yeah. Jane’s directing style is gentle and supportive and warm and detailed, and feeling-first. We had a lot of conversations days before scenes, just talking about them, especially those intimate scenes, and especially the scenes where it felt important to communicate something specific, and in a specific way. Jane is incredibly inquisitive, one of the highest-EQ people I’ve ever met. Just so perceptive of other people’s emotions and feelings. It’s like they have X‑ray vision. Just an incredibly supportive person.
I know, obviously, across Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Hacks, it feels like, for someone who’s relatively at the beginning of what I hope is a very long and fruitful career, you’ve had these experiences which are kind of rare. They seem so positive. Has that set you up with a vision of what you want your career to look like going forward?
It has. I think it is a total myth that good work is only made from some mad genius who makes everyone suffer. Total fucking bullshit. I think good artists are kind because they’re perceptive and they can understand people and have empathy. I get that all these guy filmmakers are good at setting up shots. I get it. But I always respond to the ones who are tender and vulnerable and sweet. I know that they’re out there. I’ve come across a lot of really sweet people. I also think it’s a standard that I try to set too. I think the good thing about feeling more embodied and more powerful is that I’m just like, it’s not gonna fly. I don’t want to see anyone being spoken to in a negative way, and I will never do that to someone. No divas allowed, you know what I mean? Only divas in the cool sense, like Jean Smart, for instance.