the times | Monday July 20 2020 1GT 5
times
I wanted to show a different story:
that a hot boy can turn up, change
your life — and, at the end, offer you
something that might just be more
valuable: friendship.
From the beginning of the process
I wanted to cast Alfie Allen of Game
of Thrones in the role of male lead. I’d
seen him at the Glastonbury Festival
several years before, around 3am,
having had a “good night” and trying
to walk back to his tent. When he took
a tumble, he stood back up and, even
though there was no one else around,
gave a gracious, theatrical I-meant-
to-do-that bow. In the first casting
meeting I pitched hard for him on
the basis of the above anecdote, and
also because I thought he was really
handsome and hot, and good for the
female viewer’s eye. At the end of my
pitch there was an awkward silence
— in which I remembered that Alfie
Allen’s mother was our producer.
Still, that is a story that gives me
more dignity than the story of how
we eventually managed to persuade
Emma Thompson to turn up for
Emma Thompson Day. I wrote her
a letter, telling her how, on my
teenage God Wall, the biggest
picture was of her because I adored
her. When I went for my first job
interview in London, at the age of 16,
I was so terrified that I felt I needed
some manner of “courage application”
— so I took the picture of her off the
wall and ate it, to give me feminist
strength. I got the job.
I figured that, in telling Thompson
this story, I might persuade her to take
the role — or put out a restraining
order. Thankfully, it was the former.
Which is how we ended up having
Emma Thompson Day, and I ended
up in the toilet, hoping that all the
theories I’d had about making a new
kind of coming-of-age movie would
prove to be right in practice.
Well, it’s two years since I sat in
that cubicle, hoping that I hadn’t
embroiled 150 people in a gigantic
and embarrassing mistake, and How
to Build a Girl is circumnavigating its
way around the restrictions on cinema
by streaming on Amazon Prime from
Friday, July 24. I think it’s a happy
ending. The review aggregator
rottentomatoes.com records that our
overall score is about 80 per cent; our
director, Coky Giedroyc, has gone on
to start shooting the new Take That
movie; and my social media timeline
is full of people happily planning
viewing parties for Friday night.
Maybe the most significant thing
is that Beanie — who has now, quite
rightly, gone on to be a massive star
after Booksmart — is in a serious
relationship with one of our producers,
Bonnie Chance-Roberts, after they fell
in love on set. So I’m happy to admit
that I was wrong about one thing —
all coming-of-age movies do involve
a girl meeting the love of her life. The
girl will always get the girl, in the end.
And now that it’s all over, I know
that, however much of a fuss and
a hoo-ha it feels at the time, there
is nothing more addictive than
imagining, writing and making
a film for the women who have not
yet seen themselves on screen. I’m
already writing the next one. It’s about
women who get tired of all their
disastrous dates and start making
perfect robot husbands...
Lionsgate UK will release How
to Build a Girl on Amazon Prime
Video from Friday, July 24. Amazon
Prime costs £79 a year, or £7.99 a
month amazon.co.ukLeft: Caitlin Moran
and Beanie Feldstein.
Above: Alfie Allen,
Feldstein and Moranlasciviously pat his lap, and say, “Sit
here, and let’s talk about it” — that is
a scene directly taken from my first
job, when I was 16. I get Johanna to
do what I did: slam myself down on
his lap and bounce up and down,
shouting, “I don’t know why I have to
sit here when all the men are sitting
on chairs, but OK!”
She, and I, got the promotion. It
was 30 years before Me Too. Back
then, you just had to make do.
2) Have a heroine who has no friends.
The over-riding trope of almost any
book, TV show or movie about
teenage girls is that the most
important thing for them is their
friends. Their friends are the ones
who will keep them safe, see them
through, help them grow. If a girl
has her gal-pals — her ride-or-dies —
then she will, whatever her problems,
eventually be fine.
This is all, obviously, splendid and
true, but what if you are a teenage girl
who has no friends? If you are alone?
There are many, many young women
who have not yet found their gangs or
soulmates, and at 16 I was definitely
one of them. I wanted to make a
movie for girls who don’t have anyone
to have sleepovers with, or give them
makeovers or advice.
So what do you do if you are a
lonely girl? You cling to your heroes
instead. They are your teenage
imaginary friends. When I was 16, liketo do with love, or status, or just
attending an amazing party, ten
minutes before the end, for which the
obstacles preventing that partygoing
drive 90 per cent of the movie.
Vanishingly few comedies about
teenage girls are about the defining
state of being young and working
class. That you have to work out how
you’re going to make your money.
That this will be the primary motive
of your every day. That, without it
you won’t be able to come of age;
for, as Johanna says in How to Build
a Girl, “The alpha and omega of
everything is, bitch gotta pay rent.” If
university is out of the question, and
you know your parents can’t support
you, your most pressing task is
working out how you will make
money, and fast — otherwise you
will stay where you are for ever.
I’d never seen a funny movie about
a working class girl’s career apart
from Working Girl, which I found
very inspirational in terms of the
size of Melanie Griffith’s hair. It’s
approximately the size of a wardrobe.
So satisfying.
So I wanted to make a movie about
a teenage girl hustling: how do you
blag your way into a job? How do you
deal with being the only girl in the
room? What happens when sexual
harassment, almost inevitably, raises
its head? When Johanna asks for
a promotion — only for her boss to
Johanna, I had my God Wall: a
wall in my bedroom covered with
pictures of my heroes. The Brontë
sisters, Elizabeth Taylor, Sylvia
Plath, Cleopatra, Jo March, Karl
Marx, Donna Summer, and Maria
from The Sound of Music. When
I needed advice, I would imagine
what they would say.
In the movie, this God Wall
comes alive and talks to Johanna
— and because I believe that, if
you get to make a movie, you really
should try to make it as much
fun as possible, I asked all my
modern-day heroes to play my
teenage heroes. We’ve got Alexei
Sayle, Jameela Jamil, Lily Allen,
Michael Sheen, Sharon Horgan,
Mel and Sue, Andi Oliver and
Gemma Arterton all camping their
tits off in the roles. As expected,
Sylvia Plath — played with exquisite
darkness by Lucy Punch — gives
terrible advice: “Maybe, Johanna, you
should just kill yourself. And I know
some good ways to do it.”
3) A heroine who is a big girl, but
that is not her defining characteristic.
She’s not called Fat Amy, like in
Pitch Perfect; half of her character isn’t
“eating cakes”, like Melissa McCarthy
in Bridesmaids. Once I knew we’d got
Beanie Feldstein — an actress who is
absolutely supreme and glorious in
her body — for the role of Johanna
I wrote a new scene for her where,
due to a long sequence of events,
she is in a bikini made of bin bags,
looking amazing, and giving a huge,
f***-you-all resignation speech to her
older, cynical male bosses. In the
21st century, being a curvy girl is
neither a character nor a plot. It’s
just a fact of life for 60 per cent of
the female population.
4) No boyfriends. No husband at
the end. When we’re watching a
coming-of-age movie, we know the
hot guy we see in the first 20 minutes
is the person that the heroine will end
up with in the end — no matter the
twists or misunderstandings on the
way. Does she start off by accidentally
punching him? She’ll end up kissing
him. That’s just how these things go.
Although I love a romance, I do find
it slightly creepy that we still have
such a 19th-century urge to marry off
our young female characters by the
90th minute. In How to Build a Girl,COVER: JAY BROOKS FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE. BELOW: MATTHEW LLOYD FOR THE TIMES; STEFANIE KEENAN/GETTY IMAGESWhat do
you do if
you’re a
lonely girl?
You cling
to your
heroes
“Sit
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