The star ofBooksmarttries not to judge.
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Do you remember Izze?Beanie Feldstein asks.
Were talking about high-school parties, and one stands out in her memory above all the others.
Im like,If I have my cake, I cant have tequila.
And then running back down and doing it again, like, My phone hates me!
she says, cowering in her seat.
Oh God, just a nightmare.Oy.
She was going through it!
I try not to judge.
I was like,Thats it.
Jonah is like an encyclopedia of cinema, and Im like that with musical theater.
I was genuinely just obsessively listening to theInto the Woodscast recording on repeat, she says.
As you do at 12.
Before she could make her Broadway dreams happen, though, she had to fix her voice.
Nodules on Feldsteins vocal cords made it sound husky, and she lost her voice for months.
So Feldstein said okay: I went to speech therapy and singing therapy like five times a week.
She wrote her college essay about it.
There is no role of The Tempest!
Julie, for the first time, snaps back: It is the titular role!
Feldsteins performance as Molly inBooksmartstretches the ferocity of that one line reading across 100 minutes.
She makes declarations, not suggestions, and wears a plaid blazer as armor.
The movie doesnt make fun of how seriously Molly takes everything.
To Wilde, too much comedy rests on women being self-deprecating.
Its Oh, look at how theyre a disaster in the world!
You laugh at them, she says.
Beanies comedy comes from the way she delivers material.
InBooksmart,that creates this fissure.
They havent dealt with that issue yet in their relationship.
At Wesleyan, she dated guys.
I was sort of like,Men?
Sure.Then I met my girlfriend and I was like,Oh no, this is love.
This is what being in love feels like.
There was no big coming out, no paragraphs-long Instagram post explaining how she now identifies.
I didnt figure that out until last year.
It wasnt like I was in high school and feeling oppressed or plagued by understanding my sexuality.
Its the depiction of real teenage anxiety and awkwardness and horniness and all of that.
That is so beautifully depicted, and the fact that its a queer relationship is incredible, Feldstein says.
Its a universality of experience, but youre depicting universality through a queer relationship.
I feel so green and so new and so lucky, she continues.
Every second of every day, Im like,You guys let me on this set?
Its the second of her films that she cant wait to show her future children.
Maybe my kids will be like, Mom, shut up.
Go into your room.
We dont wanna watch your movie!
