Amy Adams Wants Moms To Feel Seen After Watching ‘Nightbitch’
‘Nightbitch’ Producer and Star Adams, Film Director Marielle Heller, Novel’s Author Rachel Yoder Kick Off Moms’ Night Out with ‘Nightbitch’ National Campaign to Spotlight Childcare Challenges, Solutions
NEW YORK — Following an advance screening of “Nightbitch” last night for 80 moms and caregivers at Quad Cinema, the film’s producer and star Amy Adams shared her hope that moms watching the film feel seen and heard. Adams joined the film’s director and producer Marielle Heller, and author of the 2021 novel “Nightbitch” Rachel Yoder for a powerful Q&A moderated by InStyle Executive Editor Danielle McNally, that included reflections on each of their own experiences as new moms, and the transformative power of telling nuanced stories about motherhood and parenting in a society that provides little to no supports for parents.
The event kicked off the nationwide “Moms’ Night Out with Nightbitch” campaign organized by Caring Across Generations, Moms First, MomsRising, and Paid Leave for All to spotlight the urgent need for affordable childcare and paid family and medical leave. Ahead of the film’s theatrical release on Dec. 6, the campaign has offered childcare vouchers to enable mothers and caregivers to attend advance screenings in eight cities — New York City as well as Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle — to connect through their shared experiences of care and channel their collective energies into demanding better systemic supports for parents.
“Coming together tonight to watch ‘Nightbitch’ is an opportunity to recommit to the policies, like childcare and paid family medical leave, that could support us so we can become the moms, caregivers, and humans we want to be,” said Ai-jen Poo, executive director of Caring Across Generations and president of National Domestic Workers Alliance. “Parenting shouldn’t be a solitary struggle, real support looks like policies that lift up families, caregivers and their communities.”
Yoder shared an instance when childcare, made affordable by a public grant, was critical to her career: “When I was a young mother of a two-year-old I got a $10,000 Iowa State grant that was the only reason why this book got written; the grant allowed me to pay for childcare a few hours every day. At the time I needed affordable childcare so desperately — we all do.”
Portraying those kinds of honest and far-from-glamorous challenges was central to the director’s approach to the film. “This movie could be the antidote to Instagram culture and what we’re fed online about motherhood that makes us feel bad about ourselves, or that we don’t have it together,” said Heller, who returned to the theme of society’s untenable expectations for mothers throughout the night. “We don’t often get to see in media what it really looks like to become a mother.”
Adams shared how her own personal connections to the main character shaped her process for preparing for the role. “When I approached Mari, I had just finished a [theater] play; I was exhausted,” said Adams. “We decided to meet Mother [the film’s main character] where I was at, instead of putting a veneer on it….I hope people feel seen. I definitely had a pair of sweatpants I wore too many times when I first had my daughter.”
Underscoring the transformative power of telling real, authentic stories about motherhood in all its complexity, Yoder said: “The emotional core of the book is the generational pain of watching what our mothers have sacrificed, watching their pain, up close for years, and not being able to change their situation. It’s so visceral and our mothers didn’t have a story for their experience. That’s why I wrote this book; I needed a new story.”