May December may have been directed by a screen legend, Todd Haynes, but was the feature debut for writer, Samy Burch. Her sharp script is one of the best original screenplays of the year. Burch’s characters were brought to life on screen by Academy Award Winners Natalie Portman and Julianne More alongside the incredible Charles Melton. Our Awards Editor, Jillian Chilingerian, spoke to Burch after the Los Angeles premiere of May December about the film, her writing process, and more.

*This interview contains brief plot spoilers for May December.*

Jillian Chilingerian: We kind of briefly met last night. It was fun time. Great, great party.
Samy Burch: Yeah, we did! That was very fun.

Jillian Chilingerian: But I’m so excited to speak with you right after seeing the movie getting time to digest everything.
Samy Burch: I’m glad. So that was your first time seeing it.

Jillian Chilingerian: That was my first time. It had been widely anticipated for me for months. Everyone was like, ‘you haven’t seen this yet?’ But, not until last night and it was very rewarding.
Samy Burch: I’m so glad. It’s fun to see it with a crowd.

Jillian Chilingerian: There’s so much going on but the film to me, this is very like a demented Nancy Meyers movie with Desperate Housewives energy, which I love both of those. A movie with these iconic actors and with Todd Haynes, it’s just such an enjoyable viewing experience. So something that really stuck out to me watching Natalie Portman’s character was it made me reflect on our own obsession with humanizing people and, getting as close to humanity as we can. And we see her doing that literally, like physically and mimicry. So I kind of wanted to first jump into our obsession with wanting to humanize everyone that we that we see.
Samy Burch: It’s an interesting it’s an interesting question. I think I’m kind of the belief that we can’t do that enough and we don’t do it as far as some of the depictions. I think there’s actually a lot of black and white thinking in fiction. I think Natalie’s character is so self-serving that even while she’s saying she’s looking for the truth. By the end, we feel that she’s really just so desperate to be taken seriously as an actress and at any cost, you know.

Jillian Chilingerian: There are so many twists and turns in this, and there are new pieces of information that you’re processing and then rethinking how you originally felt about each character. I love those kinds of movies. In that process of putting that on the page, what was your intention behind that and creating almost like a mystery?
Samy Burch: Totally. I mean, I think that there’s like a fragmented way in which we’re seeing everything and that just felt natural. To kind of let it leak out in these spurts, you know, it’s almost like you’re a detective at the scene of a murder and there are clues everywhere and you have to figure out okay, we’ll have this get over here. You know, you’re trying to reverse engineer it. But emotionally, I think that in setting the movie 20 years after the start of this story, that’s that’s one area where there’s a lot of air, you know, distance and then coming in with this actress who’s going to play her there. That brings this other element that’s already kind of refracted. And then that just keeps happening like every, every person we meet, we get a different view. And even the the scenes with Joe and Gracie with Charles [Melton] and Julianne [Moore] there’s it I do feel like it functions in in this double image where you can’t help but think of them before you know you can’t help but think of their origin almost alongside of it. Like is this what it was always like? So there’s something like that made sense to me about telling the story that way. You know, because it is impossible to see. It is impossible to know you could do this movie as a complete traditional retelling and you could just watch it and you still won’t ever get like what Elizabeth is doing in her film. And you mean you can’t really ever totally get to the truth because ultimately, a lot of that lies with Gracie’s ease interior life and she’s not giving us access to that or potentially not giving herself access to it. You know, like there’s an unknowable quality.

Jillian Chilingerian: I like that you don’t even have really any flashbacks in your world. When she reads the letter in that monologue that’s glass shattering you’re thinking like, ‘Oh, I’m putting this into perspective now on how I really might feel about the situation,’ like it’s almost like that truth that I think specifically Joe was holding on to for all these years and I love that this is kind of as a reflection moment. And also, on repression so I also want to kind of dive more into Joe’s role on this because like, I love Charles Melton. I was a Riverdale fan so I was like ‘yes, this is our moment for him.’ So just wanting to hear about working around the character of Joe because he’s so nuanced and so subtle.
Samy Burch: He’s so incredible in the movie, such an incredible actor. Yeah, the letter, the monologue. We learned a lot there. You know, it’s like a lot of things converge in that we see. Obviously, kind of the best version that Elizabeth will probably ever do of playing this character and she’s alone in her room in the mirror. But we also learn a lot about Gracie but she’s been pretty dishonest about some very key things that you know, she was not naive. She knew that she was that she was in danger of the law. And you know, there are these things we have to kind of readjust but for me, it’s always and especially the way its right to camera and if you’re in the audience of a theater especially it feels like it’s looking down on you. I always just feel I feel that we are Joe in that moment. And, there’s this incredible amount of pressure that’s been put on him by a person that’s that’s clearly quite disturbed. You know, that’s almost our closest portal to a flashback that we see because this is a relic, of the time, of real-time. But you know, there’s some pressure oflike she is defining love for him. This is a rare connection, a rare love like trust me. That amount of pressure and definition put upon someone so young, it’s almost impossible to then untangle everything that happened later that happened after it. So yes, he’s incredibly heartbreaking in the movie. It is sort of in a way he’s coming of age and, I think we get the sense that he’s got a crush on his butterfly friend that they’ve been texting you know, things have been shifting as this graduation approaches and he knows it’s just gonna be the two of them in this house. And then I think Elizabeth coming in at the same age that grace, he wasn’t the same age he is, you know, there’s just a lot of shifting of these tectonic plates that haven’t moved forever because they couldn’t, you know, they would everything would fall too far apart. So, we’re just seeing that very beginning of him. Starting to process what has been impossible for him before this moment.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love it with the allegory of watching the butterfly come out of the cocoon and simultaneously, you know, he’s almost coming out of his cocoon of totally realizing this.
Samy Burch: There’s just this sense that he’s this caretaker you know, I mean, he’s much as he is a butterfly. It’s also this kind of metaphor, his subconscious is giving himself that he would have this hobby, and it’s the way he’s also dealt with all these people in his life. I mean, the kids are so incredible and you know, you get the sense that he is a really good father and he has protected them and and he’s kind of been forced to be a caretaker to Gracie, you know, at least trained to be one because of her incredible mood swings. And so, you know, all of that, I think really speaks to him his core personality or his what he is as a person, but then it’s also very hard to untangle because, you know, what choice did he have really.

Jillian Chilingerian: Yeah, I love that moment of him and his son on the roof having that moment, that’s what really caught me where he’s like, ‘I don’t want this to be a bad memory for you. Is this fun?’
Samy Burch: I’ve had a lot of fathers come up to me, specifically about that line, which is really interesting. It’s meaningful, but yeah, it’s a funny scene. And it’s so so sad. I mean, it just oscillates between the two and they’re both so wonderful and to see this 18 year old kid feel so much further along in his development. It’s a stark contrast, like in some ways, you know, they seem on the same page, but in some ways even seems ahead.

Jillian Chilingerian: And then going into we have Julianne, we have Natalie… I feel like we rarely get to see very complex, rich, nuanced women side by side. I love in the title sequence that their names are side by side. We get a strong female two hander once every like five years and I think for both of their characters kind of watching them, kind of same with Joe, this idea of identity and constructing and figuring that out. And so I really like how was that of you know, with these two women, not showing them as a monolith, but I feel like just showing that spectrum of like how women can be.
Samy Burch: Totally, I think that figuring out the ways in which they’re similar and the ways in which they’re different and how they’re sort of circling each other and they like to be you know, I think they enjoy being seen by the other or they enjoy the reflection of themselves. It’s interesting to kind of figure that out as you go, working on the script, because there’s a lot of logistical things. I mean, there’s this kind of investigate reporter element of what Elizabeth is doing in town. So you know, there’s kind of these scenes where we get a lot of good information. And then it’s these very intimate ones like doing the makeup in the bathroom and the baking in the kitchen, you know, where were some of their stickier parts of this dynamic kind of come into play. And there’s also a lot of who’s ultimately in charge, like, who’s dominant here and who’s kind of controlling the narrative, because they both have very clear intentions that are selfish. They’re trying to use the other person trying to explain it’s a battle of who’s going to exploit who, ultimately. But then it’s also getting to see those women. I love, love the scenes with Elizabeth where there are those moments where we see how fake or how insincere she’s being with these people, you know, there’s these expressions sometimes really, cruelly, unnecessarily and that’s also a sense of humor in the resource of humor and the story, you know, this contrast.

Jillian Chilingerian: I remeber reading the script and thinking ‘Huh, I wonder what the discourse is gonna be around this. Oh, this is so dark.’ This is fascinating, these characters are so tragic. And then kind of seeing it brought to life last night, the laughter and the gasps from the audience, it was so good. And so I’m wondering about that. You know, initially when you wrote it and then seeing how it came to life with Todd and directing it, was that always in the cards for having that perfect balance of the comedy but tragic as well?
Samy Burch: Oh, sure. Yeah. I’ve always seen it as a dark comedy, and drama, you know, like a humane dark comedy. The music and the framing and everything that comes with a Todd Haynes picture, which is even talk about these last five minutes. That’s, of course, something you cannot be prepared for because it’s so exciting. And such a fascinating process to watch an artist, especially such as him. I’ve gotten all kinds of responses from the script, where some people see no humor and some people only see see humor and that’s been interesting. But yes, that’s what I see and what I’ve liked is that there is a lot of dark comedy, but it’s never at the expense of Joe. It’s always been that he’s very protected within the script. And within the story, even in just you know, there are these very quiet scenes with him in the first half you know, in his bed like watching this old house and we’ll go into photographs, you know, there’s like gauze around him until his moment to step into it, but yes, I’m so happy to see people getting the humor and laughing and gasping and feeling so uncomfortable. I think you can really feel it in a crowd, how physically uncomfortable, a lot of it is, and I think that’s why you need some of the humor to sort of release the tension. You know, I enjoy that as just a viewer as an audience member. That’s kind of my favorite stuff.

Jillian Chilingerian: I feel whenever we see tabloids and scandals, or things that are kind of dark such as this scenario, now that we’re in like meme culture and that type of stuff. I feel like it’s very just that the natural process even though it’s like, would that be my first inkling?
Samy Burch: Totally. There are lots of things that are so dark in life, and it’s pretty rarely that there’s there’s no light, either. You know, I think that the human spirit, there’s something that just exists and I think when when I see movies about things that there’s just not any sense of of humor at all, you know, even in little moments like that always feels strange to me. This is obviously more than than that, but, you know, I just think that things are always a mix. You know, I mean, like The Sopranos is a comedy. It’s obviously hilarious, like everyday, things that are dark that are funny that just make them all the more human.

Jillian Chilingerian: Well, that’s a perfect way to end this conversation. But thank you so much for diving into this movie. So nice to talk to you. Congratulations. This is just such an exciting moment.
Samy Burch: My god, it’s been crazy. Yeah. Thank you so much, and so nice to meet you yesterday.

May December is in select theaters now and will be available on Netflix on December 1st.
You can read our review of the film here.