Starring Ethan Hawke, The Film “Blue Moon” Documents The Night Lyricist Lorenz Hart Realizes His Partnership with Richard Rodgers is Over

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Tuesday, 17 March 2026 14:16

Written by Brad Balfour

Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart

Inspired by the letters of legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart and Elizabeth Weiland, director Richard Linklater developed the biographical drama “Blue Moon” — with a script written by Robert Kaplow. It stars veteran actor Ethan Hawke playing the diminutive Hart in his waning days before his untimely death at 48. Linklater and Hawke have worked together before — in the film “Boyhood” where it won significant notice and for the “Before” trilogy which also garnered award noms as well. After debuting at The New York Film Festival this Fall, the film is getting further attention and has led to various nominations of Hawke again including the Oscar short list for Best Actor.

Born Lorenz Milton Hart, the American lyricist was half of Rodgers and Hart — the legendary Broadway songwriting team. Some of his more famous lyrics include those for such standards as “Blue Moon,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Manhattan,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and “My Funny Valentine” among many others. Born on May 2, 1895, in New York’s Harlem, to German-Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda (Isenberg) Hart. Through his mother, he was a great-grandnephew of the German poet Heinrich Heine. (The elder of two sons, his brother, Teddy Hart, also went into theater and became a musical comedy star.)

On March 31, 1943, Hart slipped away from the opening night of “Oklahoma!” — the new hit Broadway musical his former creative partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) had written with Oscar Hammerstein II. Hart arrived at Sardi’s restaurant, where preparations were underway for the opening night celebration. The film follows Hart as he reflects on himself, his failed partnership with Rodgers, his obsession with 20-year-old beauty, Weiland (Margaret Qualley), and delusional hopes for the future. A few months later, the masterful writer was found dead on the streets.

In June 2024, Sony Pictures Classics acquired its worldwide distribution rights in addition to joining the project as co-financier. Principal photography took place over 15 days on a soundstage in Dublin, Ireland, wrapping by September. Now this film, celebrating the music of another era, is being celebrated as well with star Hawke and director Linklater enjoying various accolades and positive reviews.

The following conversation is an edited version of a discussion that took place after a screening at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their Contenders series.

Q: Have you ever heard the musical “Oklahoma!” on stage?

Ethan: No. My first musical was a little known one called “Annie” that I saw in Atlanta. I went home and immediately wrote a sequel to it called “Arthur.” You remember how she had a little half heart? Well, the truth is, she had a twin brother. He also had red hair, and lived in a boy’s orphanage. He really had the other half.

So what happens at the start of my musical is she’s on the fire escape, and sings, “maybe far away,” but the other boy was like, “or maybe real nearby.” Her parents taught them that song to reunite them. It was the story of their reuniting. It was very sad.

Rick Linklater: It felt like “Oklahoma, as well as all the music of Hammerstein’s, were just there in my whole life. My mom was listening to the cast recordings so the music was there. But I think I saw it somewhere along the way. I saw it numerous times, but it was in schools.

Q: You not only made “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” out this year, you’ve also produced 200 movies, have five in production at least, including a film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and George Forrest’s “Merrily, We Roll Along, “which is coming out in 2040.

Rick Linklater: Five in production? Not that I know of. I think things get listed online, throw out an idea.

Q: Ethan, you have two films in release right now. In addition to “Blue Moon,” you have “Black Phone 2” out, and a multi-episode television series, “The Lowdown.” You’re also executive producer of a podcast series, Fish Priests and you’re making films of your own. 

Ethan Hawke: We do work a lot.

Q: How do you juggle all of these projects?

Rick Linklater: We haven’t worked together in 10 years. We figured out, we have a big gap. But, that’s my answer.

Q: How do these films and projects inform each other?  how do you shift roles, because you’re obviously adept enough to do that. Is it just the way that you’re thinking about certain projects at a specific moment in your world?

Rick Linklater: This had a long gestation. we’ve been on this for like 13 years, we figure, somewhere in there. Also, that’s the same for “Nouvelle Vague,” the French New Wave film. Ethan has made films, documentaries, and narratives about artists. You could put them together. I think you had seven films.

Ethan Hawke: The two of us both like to work. Maybe it’s part of our friendship. We both are restless, and really enjoy it. One of the things I love about Rick is how curious he is, that you could be in love with punk rock and  Rogers and Hart. That you can make a baseball movie and a movie about Jean-Luc Godard. His interests are comprehensive; it’s really one of the most wonderful things about us being friends is how curious you are about all different walks of life. It informs your movies. We both are really restless, I think.

Rick Linklater: Yeah, and we meet without any ideas. Like, it’ll be, “what are you reading? When are you coming? Hey, I read this thing on Tumblr. Yeah.” We’ve just always  been like that. Ethan and I met in 30, what was is, oh, it was 1993, fall of ’93, 32 years ago, whatever. We started talking then, and I  just said, “Yeah, we’ve  been talking ever since.” We’ve made movies along the way, too, a lot. We didn’t even realize it had been 10 years, because not only are we developing this, there’s other things we’re talking about. So, it’s just ongoing.

Ethan Hawke: We just got the script for this while we were finishing “Boyhood.” That’s how long we’ve been talking about this.

Rick Linklater: We’ve been talking about this thing.

Q: One of the films that comes to mind is the collaboration you did on tape, which was an adaptation of a play. I think it was a kind of chamber piece, set in real time, in a motel. it does have a certain kind of affinity for this single location film.

Rick Linklater: Sorry, this is a more fun location than a crummy motel. It’s nice to be here. But, yeah, that was kind of a real time movie in one location. So, I think that informed this. We’ve been talking about that a few times here.

Ethan Hawke: The “Before” Trilogy has an aspect of real time to it as well. There’s a lot. Rick likes to say that if you don’t have a plot, you need to make it very concise.

Rick Linklater: I think that’s a fact. People mentioned it in something else.

Q:  Interestingly, you were not the first to play Larry Hart, Mickey Rooney came before you.

Ethan Hawke: Mickey Rooney and I play a lot of the same parts.

Q: Did you watch the film “Words and Music?” It’s rather a powerful take on their lives [released in 1948].

Ethan Hawke: It’s pretty silly.

Rick Linklater: Yes, that’s an excuse to have it, in 35 mm with some really nice performances. It’s silly, of course.

Q: It’s a heartbreaking story, really. When you read this book about Hart, “A Ship Without A Sail: The Life of Lorenz Hart,” his final months are just absolutely devastating. The question everyone, of course, has been throwing out in the context of this film, is the physicality of this performance and the transformations you have to go through for it.

Rick Linklater: Everybody gives actors a lot of credit when they put on a lot of weight or lose a lot of weight, but no one ever gives them credit for losing a lot of height.

Ethan Hawke: I’m proud of myself about it. The history of cinema has spent a lot of energy making small, diminutive men look large and powerful, and we just had to invert it. But it was his physical appearance that  says a lot about his relationship to himself and to society. It was an important aspect to the character. He’s the smallest person in the room with the biggest personality, and I’d like to think that it almost felt like if he stopped talking nobody would see him, That’s how he felt. We knew it was important, and how to do it was extremely tricky. 

We knew we didn’t want to use computers or anything like that, but that wasn’t the only thing, it’s the dyed hair and the comb-over, he has arthritis, and he’s going to die in a few months. But in truth, those superficial things are only valuable if they’re unlocking his soul in some way. If the movie became about that, it would be to his detriment. We were trying to look for things that would unlock him, and unlock me as an actor, to become somebody else.

Rick Linklater: I had a front row seat for that unlocking, and when you were five feet tall looking up at everybody, you’d be like, “Holy shit, it’s a whole different world.”

Ethan Hawke: None of my attempts to flirt with Margaret Qualley went over with anything but a ridiculous nickel.

Rick Linklater: Technically, it was a real pain in the ass, of course, but the actor who played Oscar [Hammerstein], who’s notoriously a tall guy, was probably, Ethan’s around six feet tall, that guy was like five nine. Elevating him – but he was perfect for Oscar – so we would have him up on some boxes, and Ethan kind of lower, and everybody trying not to fall in, trickle in.

Q: It was a good capture. It was said that Larry Hart didn’t even think he was capable of seducing his own shadow, which is beautiful and heartbreaking.

Rick Linklater: That was a big leap for Ethan to be able to get to that headspace. No, never, never has anyone ever wanted to do it that way.

Ethan Hawke: But the thing is, all that’s funny, but the truth is, from the get-go, this is a screenplay that I spent, whatever, 40 years of acting. On the one hand, I can count the amount of screenplays that knocked me back so much that I was like, have to do this. The quality of the writing, learning the lines was fun, because I would sit there and giggle and be moved. Every turn of phrase was fascinating and so well-built.

The way it really does function, the whole movie, and we came to this pretty early in the process. Years ago, when we first started reading it out loud, we said, the whole movie needs to feel like a 90-minute Rodgers and Hark song. It’s got to float, and it’s got to have a bridge, and it’s got to have dissonance and resolve, and have that same wit and the same soulfulness that they carry. And if we could do that, then we felt like we could sustain the audience’s attention with this period. The target of this movie is so small. It’s such a fragile film, and Robert’s writing is so exceptional. It would be impossible without it. 

And so, Seven Minutes in Heaven in the Coat Room is one thing, but when the quality of writing is so high, it makes it thrilling for us. And then our job became about how to make sure we believed it, and how to make the song take off.

Q: When you’re playing real-life figures, are there ground rules for what you feel comfortable doing or not doing? I’m not talking about historical figures like Marco Polo in this case, or Jesus, or Joan of Arc. I’m talking about people in recent memory. Do you feel, do you do copious amounts of research? Do you try to emulate the mannerisms, the hand, the famous hand rubbing that Larry Hart would do in the kind of nervousness?

Ethan Hawke: Well, you say famous, but most people haven’t heard of Larry Hart. We start off

Rick Linklater: Even going to the height of people’s heads. No one’s going to, first off, no one even knows who Larry Hart is, much less how tall he is. Like ,it matters to us. It matters to that character. So we try to be as exact as possible.. There’s footage of him.  They shot a lot of little short bits, kind of promotional bits with Rogers. So you can see him kind of walking around.

Ethan Hawke: He’s kind of an awkward guy at his height.

Rick Linklater: Yeah, a lot of photos, he’s a pretty handsome guy. He would always position himself kind of up, and Rogers would be sitting. But you see him walking around. It’s like, he isn’t awkward. He’s awkward in his body, for sure.

Ethan Hawke: I felt a sense of relief that I had all the benefits of these specific details about the real man to draw from, create dynamics in the movie, without the albatross of, if you play Johnny Cash or Muhammad Ali, or, some of these more famous figures where the audience has a huge backlog of expectations about what the person looks and sounds like. I didn’t have to deal with that, so I could choose what would help me in this performance, and help Robert’s writing, and help Rick.

Q: You’re more inclined to be John Brown or Nikolai Tesla or Larry Hart than taking on Muhammad Ali anytime soon, but you never know.

Ethan Hawke: It frees you up as an actor. It’s more exciting. if you were to play JFK or something like that, everybody has such awareness of how he moved and looked, and you start having to do an imitation, and then that would scare me.

Q: One of the things that is very poignant about this film is that it marks the passing of a moment in New York life. It is very moving to see Sardis, for example, a place that doesn’t exist like that anymore.

Ethan Hawke: It still exists. It’s funny you say that, because Bobbie, Kim, Bobbie and I, we shot a little Sardis in Ireland, and Bobbie and I were like, “before we get in the plane, let’s go to Sardis. Let’s break bread in Sardis and just try to bring New York with us.” And we sat down there, and there was Patti LuPone sitting there, having a martini and talking, and all this different theater. It’s different. Broadway is so different. Broadway used to be the absolute fulcrum of the entertainment world. Everything started here. The power of it has been diminished, and the romance of it has been diminished, but there’s still the likes of Broadway showing up.

Rick Linklater: I feel the ghost there. I’ve been doing old theaters. They’re still here.

Q: So many of your films, though, are about these kinds of inflection points in history, whether it’s the life of an adolescent, or it’s the life of a city.

Rick Linklater: This kind of works on a couple levels, I think. In Broadway history it’s kind of a before and after moment, in musical theater history. But, I always thought, well, gosh, it’s just the end of an era. But it’s really from Larry’s perspective, like, the way it’s moving on without him, that was so poignant. I always thought this thing was like this sad little howl into the night from the artist who’s being left behind. specifically by his partner, who’s moved on, but the times, too, even more, kind of crushingly, at his taste and what he’s about is kind of becoming a thing of the past. So I don’t think any artists kind of think of what they do as having an expiration day or taste changing, but it does. It evolves, particularly in music where you can just, it’s just the idea that something was ending and he was aware enough to feel it.

Q: With “Nouvelle Vague,” it’s obviously a turning point in filmmaking. And so, the young Turks of the Cahiers thumbed their noses at the ’40s and ’50s generation of French filmmakers. there is a tense sense of a passing of the baton, in a way.

Rick Linklater: With that one, it’s kind of out with the old in a good way, for sure. It’s like independent-spirited movies and you need these new ways. You need kind of punk rock moments where things get reinvigorated. In musical theater, it changes, but people still argue, is that good? You know “Oklahoma.” Even in films, when “Sound of Music” came out, Hitchcock famously said, “Oh, shit, this thing moves movies back about 20 years,” when that became a huge hit.

Q: Richard Rodgers is not a villain by any stretch. He was driven up the wall by Larry. He did everything he could to encourage Larry to work on “Oklahoma,” to say nothing of “Connecticut Yankee.” But the performance is also really moving, because you get the sense of [not only that] he’s driven up the wall, but at the same time, he knows that Larry’s days are numbered.

Rick Linklater: I think that’s what’s heartbreaking about it, that he’s not coming, he’s done everything. He’s probably hung on another 10 years past and was getting exasperated with Larry’s drinking behavior. But it is heartbreaking to see that coming to him, really just because of Larry’s problems. I told Andrew, “It’s like, don’t worry, I’m Rodgers. I’ve had a couple of people who just have problems, and you have to do it for the team.”

It’s painful to be in that position. You can see it on his face. There’s love there. There’s a triumph over the relationship. There’s all that respect for his talent. It’s sad to see it coming to an end. Not really even for artistic reasons, but just personal reasons like that. But that’s how life is. People have problems, and they can’t outrun their demons quite often.

Q: Given how long this project was gestating, did you talk to someone about it? Did you talk to someone about that?

Rick Linklater: I just missed it. There’s another just brief quote from him in this book, he was often calling Hart sloppy in the way he wrote the lyrics and the way they landed on the music. And it’s hard to imagine only somebody like Sondheim could even perceive such a thing.

Q: It’s unimaginable.

Rick: His loyalty is so clearly Oscar talent. When you talk about Rodgers to people anywhere near a music theater, it’s like, okay, Hart or Hammerstein. And everyone says Hart, except one person. Because he’s like his uncle, like his dad. He just had to carry the torch for him.

Q: He did say one thing. He said, Hammerstein pointed out something to me, which at the tender age of 14, I didn’t fully comprehend, which is that Larry Hart freed American lyrics from the stilted Middle European operetta technique into a natural form of speech. And you can really appreciate the-

Rick Linklater: we’ll paraphrase that in the movie,

Q: Yeah, the absolute connection between Hart’s songwriting, his lyrics and Sondheim’s.

Rick Linklater: Oh, absolutely. It’s fun too.The greatest lyricist ever from having been in a conversation just for a bit. And that is something, that’s the kind of leap we would take, like Robert took with the screenplay. It’s like young Sondheim didn’t say that, old Sondheim said that. But he said it. it’s just kind of funny to have that throw that in Larry’s face.

Q:  How conscious were you of marrying certain kinds of implicit lyrics to the action on the scenes? Or,  even just the way that they are, even your delivery of lines, which is so rapid-fire and so unceasing, how do you marry the dialogue to kind of the sensuousness of the music at the time?

Rick Linklater: That was so fun to have a piano, just a happy soundtrack going. to work it where he mentions Gershwin, or he’ll say a line, and then the piano can kick in something that’s related, or he starts playing from Casablanca, and he realizes, so that was so fun. I just picked all my favorite songs that could possibly be played on the piano that night. It’s obviously not just Gershwin’s part. It’s everything.

Q: It’s everything you perform while you’re delivering lines.Sometimes.

Rick Linklater: A lot of it. But one of those grand moments, my friend, also a composer, he played. We went to the studio, he did over 100 songs. So, and then you can kind of sprinkle them throughout. But that was so fun to work in, to get a soundtrack.

Ethan Hawke: The whole movie is 90-minute raptures in our song. That’s what we’re trying to do. I was, , the filmmaking is kind of Rogers applying the structure, skeleton, and musculature of the movie, and my job was to sprinkle these lyrics on top. I think that’s a brilliant job.

As A Troubled Therapist Dealing with Increasing Trauma, Actor Rose Byrne Gives a Career-Elevating Performance, Gaining Oscar Nomination

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 13 March 2026 14:18

Written by Brad Balfour

In "If I had Legs, I'd Kick You," Australian actor Rose Byrne's presence is extraordinary. The 46-year-old possesses energy that drives a performance traversing between the real and the surreal, full of physicality and emotion. This career-defining role has been garnering her praise, awards and Oscar nomination talk.

The film had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January, 2025. At the 75th Berlin International Film Festival, Byrne won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance. Later in the year, she won the Best Actress award at the 58th Sitges Film Festival for the same role. Most recently she garnedered a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

It received a domestic release by A24 in October and got positive reviews. Byrne's performance received universal acclaim and nominations for a Golden Globe Award and Critics' Choice Award for Best Actress.

Written and directed by Mary Bronstein, the film stars Byrne, Conan O'Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater and A$AP Rocky. Byrne, as Linda, plays a therapist stretched to her limits while caring for her daughter, who is suffering from a pediatric disorder. The daughter must be fed through a PEG tube each night, and her demands add to Linda's immense stress. 

Renowned for her versatility across film and television, Byrne has been recognized for her leading roles in blockbuster comedies, independent dramas, and horror films. Her previous accolades include two AACTA Awards, a Silver Bear and a Volpi Cup, in addition to nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards.

Byrne's performance as this troubled mother has again put a spotlight on her. She spoke at a recent screening where, answering questions from a moderator, she offered insight into the challenges she grappled with in playing such a complex part.  

Q: You spent a lot of time with director Mary Bronstein before the shoot to discuss the screenplay, explore the character, and rehearse. Talk about that process.

Rose Byrne: Absolutely. Mary and I had a period of about five weeks where I went to her apartment in Chelsea. I'd dropped my kids off at school or camp. It was over the holidays [so] we worked three days a week, and sat at her kitchen table. We went through the script from page one, word one, and would talk, go off topic, and share our own horror stories. The story of Linda, or the experience she's going through, is based on something Mary Bronstein went through in her life. 

Obviously, she doesn't act like Linda, but it's an expression of something she's spoken about quite openly, so it was like comparing her to a play. It was very rare. We shot the film in 27 days, so it was quick with some ambitious sequences in the film. Everything is practical. There's a tiny bit of CGI on her stomach, but that's it. Everything else, [including] the hamster.

Q: I don't remember the hamster.

Rose Byrne: Well, the hamster in the screenplay is described as [being like] Jack Nicholson from "The Shining." It's much stricter than that. When I read that bit, I was like, “Oh, that's fabulous.” I was laughing a lot. The humor you see in the film is very much reflected in what I read. The screenplay was truly the same expression in a way I've never experienced before as an actress, so I was quite blown away when I read it.

Q: This film's very personal to the director.  How did you insert your own interpretation? You have made this film your own, and it's hard to imagine anyone else playing this role.

Rose Byrne: There is, of course, a sense of responsibility, and it’s such a heavy story. It's a personal crisis and this is Mary's story, so it's open back to her. But at a certain point, you have to jump off. Once you're on set, it becomes something else. Mary was very collaborative. It was never, mine, mine, mine. It's ours from day one. It was like, "We're collaborating on this, we have a creative dialogue," and I brought my questions to the table.  

My obsession was, who was this character before we met her? Because there's no information you can remember. Who was she before this crisis? Like, she was a person, and she used not to be a mother or a wife. Who is she? Can we reverse engineer? That's the actor's homework. You don't see that written all over, because it's boring, but you want it to feel lived in. And that's what we talked about a lot, she and I.

Q: You appear in pretty much every single scene; the camera is on you relentlessly. There's nowhere for the character –– and also for you, the actor –– to escape or to hide. What was it like to be so exposed?

Rose Byrne: It was the tensest technical assignment in many ways. It stretched me, technically, in ways I've not experienced before. I did a television show where I put it all together after I had to look at the map box for a long time. I've done some more sophisticated kind of camera work that was the language of the camera, but this was really pushing it to the extremes. And the first day was the hardest, because [that's when] we shot the first scene in the film. That's always stressful anyway. 

You're anxious, you're establishing so much, you get to know everybody. I was working with Mary, the director, who plays Dr. Spring, and the camera just got closer and closer and closer. I could hear it going, “drr, drr, drr, drr, drr, drr” so this shot was like on 35 (indecipherable) and she was like, “mm-hmm, mm-hmm, okay.” I didn't ask again after that. I just … it's my job to figure it out. But it stretched me and changed me, the experience of working like that. Because what they need, and also what they don't need, is more of a question when you're that close. So it was a challenge, but it was fun, Yeah.

Q: You and Conan O'Brien have incredible chemistry on screen.

Rose Byrne: I'm a bad therapist right there.

Q: You both bring sharp comedic instincts to this film. What’s really fascinating is that there’s nothing inherently funny about those therapy sessions, or even the conversations where your character shares some of her darkest thoughts during therapy.Shetalks about how she got rid of the wrong child, and she's not supposed to be a mother. Talk about juxtaposing comedy with the darkest and most painful human experiences?

Rose Byrne: It's a great question. That’s something I'm interested in in life. I think there’s always a tragic balance every day, waking up and being a person. This film rides a tightrope of that, the whole way, of too much … of the trap of something that is one note. It's just a hysterical woman and there's no nuance. 

The other way [to see it] is that it's too comical, that it has no weight and is silly. It was the fine tightrope we were trying [to walk] --  the tone that Mary had written and was trying to go for in the scenes. And obviously Conan is a national treasure, and so funny. But he was very strict about it. He was very much playing somebody entirely the opposite of him, playing this gregarious man who is also a reserved person with a lot of boundaries who was very strict. 

You might really see the relationship between the therapist and the mirror as the love story of the film. It's the bitter end of the relationship, where they just have contempt for one another, and they're both misbehaving. Then when he doesn't actually break up with her, the film ends, but that's the end of it. Ten minutes later she's running into the ocean. She has no guardrails after that, but his intelligence shines through in his performance. He was very nervous too; he tried to get out of doing it.

Q: He's really good.

Rose Byrne: He's an awesome actor. Mary really wanted to think outside the box for the casting, she didn't want to do the more typical, expected casting for the role. At the same time, he shot that before he shot the Spike Lee movie, so I think it was his first or second acting job, yeah.

Q: When you were reading this screenplay, did it occur to you that it was also a comedy and not just a dramatic film about a woman's breakdown?

Rose Byrne: It did occur to me -- I can see the humor. When you're reading the script and when it's revealed that she's a therapist, I thought that can't be true. Then when I go back, she's walking down the hall and is kind of indifferent. I was like, “Oh my.” I thought that was such a joke. 

To me it's such a reveal: you put therapists on this pedestal, and it's such an isolated experience. You have them –– you don't know anything about them –– and then, one of my favorite moments is when they see each other in the little kitchenette. It's so awkward. It's that moment, right, where you're just like, “mm-hmm.” It's that weird, awkward thing when you see someone out of context, but I felt the script throughout. 

Mary describes it well, that the film lives between the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your life, and the worst thing that's happened to you today. It's sort of between those two worlds, because of these grievances that Linda came up with. Whether it's the parking attendant, or the gentleman that isn't fixing her roof, or the hamster, or these grievances day-to-day that become monumental.

Q: There are two women who are suffering in this film, two mothers --you and Danielle Macdonald. She's great in the film, playing your patient, Caroline. She’s also in the middle of a crisis, for similar reasons, but not exactly the same. The film portrays the two characters very differently, giving nuances to depression and mental breakdown. Despite your character's circumstances, she provides her patient with care, and even gives her advice. How did you, Danielle and Mary, discuss the portrayals of these two mothers?

Rose Byrne: That's a great question, Danielle [MacDonald] was brilliant. She actually came into the film later, and had very difficult scenes. She has spoken about this. She spoke to friends who had suffered from postpartum [depression] and were going through that sort of thing. Mary and I also talked to a therapist along with many women who had suffered from postpartum [depression] … women with children with special needs. 

We did research in that world too, but I think how Mary presents it in the film is very interesting. There's also a bit where Linda is looking in the computer about Andrea Yates -- that horrible case of a woman who killed her kids. She's looking at real footage of Andrea. Then shortly after that, Caroline, her patient, leaves the baby and runs off. 

I think when you zoom out, it feels a bit like her patient didn't get the help she needed, because Linda was experiencing burnout, and couldn't really help this woman. Linda's not getting the help she needs, as a mother who's not quite coping, because her therapist isn't giving her the right advice. It seems like these women are being short-changed, and they eventually just become something you click on, like they didn't get the help they needed. 

Why would Andrea Yates just become another item that you click on? And that feels like when Caroline runs away, she's going to become that next article you read about. We never saw her again -- did something horrible happen? So if that makes sense, it feels like there's a thought about the lack of help that women need in these postpartum phases, or a mother in crisis in a situation like that.

Q: There are many scary moments in this film, and the scariest is when the character repeatedly runs toward the waves on the beach. That moment really centers her. Talk about the making of that scene, and also what it meant to you at that moment?

Rose Byrne: The scene was one of the hardest sequences to build; it was an extremely rough ocean at night. The cinematographer went out at one point, and I had to go get him. Then Mary was like, “Did you see that?” She was checking if I'd seen it or not. I'm from Australia, so I have a lot of respect for the ocean. You grow up very young swimming. 87% of the population is on the coast, so basically you learn to swim as soon as you're born. That helped me in a sense. I knew when to say I needed help, but I also knew when I didn't want to go either. I knew how to get in and how to get out. It was really scary, it was rough. I think the scene is actually extraordinary when you see it.

When I saw that sequence put together, it's very moving. It feels to me, again, like she's trying to escape. With the whole film, she's trying to escape. I think she's trying to escape herself, like her biggest demon is her trauma inside. It's that thing inside that we all are trying to escape from. I feel like the ocean literally spits her back out and says “No, you're not going to escape.” I feel that seeing the daughter's face at the end, to me, feels wonderful. And she does finally say, “I'll do better, I promise.” 

Then you end with a child, and a child is hope, you know? You see her face and you haven't seen this face the whole film. That's in the screenplay, that she says you never see the daughter's face. Mary's spoken to this as well, but it's kind of a two-pronged thing that she describes. As soon as you put a child on the screen, your empathy will go with the child, as it should. So she took that away from the audience, just with the mother. And also, I think, Linda can't see the child at that point. She's just become a caretaker. She's not even really a mother anymore. She's not enjoying being … there's no joy there at this point. So it feels like, to me, the film ends with some hope. 

Q: That it feels like it's a hopeful moment, but I don't believe everything can be resolved so easily.

Rose Byrne: It's been so interesting how the film plays … it's kind of a magic trick. I've had some audience members go, was A$AP Rocky real? Was he just in your imagination? Some people think that he's not real, or Danielle's character's not real. I can't lie: it's fascinating. It plays like a horror [film]. At the New York Film Festival, it plays very much like a comedy. People were laughing straight away. It was a very sophisticated crowd. In Toronto, it was more like a college crowd, so it played more like a horror film. It's been fun to see that.

Q: This film will forever be a super highlight in your bio. It has taken you to all different extremes. Did you discover something new in yourself as an actor? And what are the new challenges you want to take in the future?

Rose Byrne: I think it has changed me, creatively. I'm stretched to my limit of everything, and it was a great role in that sense. I don't know if I met all of those challenges in every moment, in every scene, but I certainly gave 1000 percent. Every day after work, I'd be like, “Did I do this?” I was very obsessed with it and found it hard, the separation anxiety from Mary Bronstein after every day. And going through everything in my head. But it has changed me. I'm not sure what I'll do next. With something like this, that’s this extreme, you have to kind of breathe out. I can't anticipate what will be even close to this.

Candace Bushnell Tells True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City at Her Upcoming One-Person Show This Friday

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Thursday, 04 December 2025 21:02

Written by Brad Balfour

Event: Candace Bushnell performs “True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City”
When: Friday, December 5, 2025 
Time: 8 pm
Where: Adler Hall
New York Society for Ethical Culture
2 W 64th St.
New York, NY 10023
Tickets: $59, $79, and $99 (plus applicable fees) 

When scribe Candace Bushnell created Carrie Bradshaw as her alter-ego while writing her “Sex and the City” column, she didn’t want her parents to know that she’d just been to a sex club. She had often appeared on TV, starting back in 1996, when she had her own reality show, “Sex, Lies and Video Clips" on VH1, where — sure enough — Bushnell and a co-host had to go to sex clubs. 

From that auspicious start to this week, the acclaimed novelist brings her one-woman show, “True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City,” to Adler Hall at New York Society for Ethical Culture on Friday, December 5th, 2025 at 8 pm. In addition, a limited number of VIP Meet and Greet tickets are available that include a photo opportunity with Bushnell. 

This best-selling novelist and TV producer is The “real life Carrie Bradshaw,” and, most recently, star of this one-woman show. Originally performed off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theater in Manhattan, the New York Times declared it a “critic’s pick.” Born in 1958, this 60-something has now performed an international version of the show in over 10 countries, including South Africa, and the UK, where Bushnell performed to a sold-out crowd at the London Palladium. The Times of London choose True Tales as their must-see show of the week.

She has appeared on dozens and dozens of chat shows, including Oprah and Charlie Rose and is currently scheduled to tour “True Tales…” in Europe and the US in 2026.

Famously the author of “Sex and the City” — published in 1996 by Atlantic Monthly Press — it became the basis for “Sex and the City,” spawning six-seasons on HBO, two movies and the reboot series “And Just Like That.” Also an acclaimed novelist, Bushnell has authored the international best-selling “Four Blondes,” “Trading Up,” “One Fifth Avenue,” “Lipstick Jungle” and “The Carrie Diaries.” The last two each became network TV series (on NBC and The CW) for two seasons.

Recently, I spoke with Candace in advance of the show. The following is an edit of that conversation.

Q: Being a literary figure on the scene, did you think of that as an achievement and were glad that you got noted for it, or did you just see yourself as another newspaper reporter? 

Candace Bushnell: It just seemed very natural because I was in that business, and most of my friends were also somehow in the media business. They were novelists or others like Morgan Entrekin, who published “Sex and the City” (Atlantic Monthly Press). It just seemed very natural. I didn’t particularly think of myself as being part of one scene or another, but part of the New York scene [overall].

Q: At that time when you were just beginning to get known and ascending in the universe of personalities, had you expected it to take off the way it did? Do you get into discussing this in your show? Tell me about the show and how it connects to your history.

Candace Bushnell: The show is the origin story of Sex and the City, mixed with my life story. It’s how I created "Sex and the City," how hard I worked to get there, why I invented Carrie Bradshaw, and what happened to me after. It’s about how I first came to New York in 1977, and went to Studio 54, had a couple of other little adventures, and then we get into how I created “Sex and the City,” the story of the real Mr. Big, and then there’s a game, real or not real, because there’s so many things that happened in the TV show that happened in my real life — they’re either better or worse.

Q: How did you manage to structure it? Is it merely a chronological thing, or more thematic, how you’ve been doing this as a show as opposed to writing it as a book?

Candace Bushnell: It’s a proper stage show with a set and you know, I watched a couple of  one man, one woman shows, and some stand up comics, but that wasn’t really, you know, that helped. There’s one stand-up comic who I watched a lot. I think her name is Hannah Gadsby. She’s an Australian comic. I started doing it because I met somebody named Mark Johnson, and he did David Foster’s show. 

Foster does a one-man show, and Mark Johnson said “You could do it, a one-woman show.” So I wrote something during Covid, like so many other people, and it just took off from there. We developed it at Bucks County Playhouse. We had a director, Lauren Lataro, who works a lot on Broadway, and an associate director, a guy named Nick Corley, and we developed it. Originally it was probably two hours long, so I was rehearsing, and performing it. There were costume changes, and then we ended up doing it off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theater. Yes, and it was a New York Times critics’ pick.

Q: You knew you were on the right route.

Candace Bushnell: Yes, so it was, and that was very exciting. It was probably November or December of 2021. And then Covid came back.

Q: Once you had Covid back, did that cause you to rethink things?

Candace Bushnell: No, the show ended, because I got Covid. Yes, first the stage manager got Covid, then several other people got it. That’s how the theater works. So a lot of shows shut down.

Q: I had Covid right at the beginning then I got the first vaccination. Were you already vaccinated, or you hadn’t been vaccinated?

Candace Bushnell: I was vaccinated.

Q: And you still got it?

Candace Bushnell: Well, people do.

Q: Having had Covid and having the show shut down, were there things that you decided to add, subtract, refine, change?

Candace Bushnell: No, no, no. The show is, I’ve done it all over the world, I think in 12 countries so far. I’ve done it twice at the London Palladium to a sold-out crowd. I’ve done it in South Africa. I have done it in Italy. I’ve done it in Denmark, Norway, Prague, Budapest, so I’ve done it in different countries. It’s the same, because, obviously, it’s in a different theater every time I do it. They have stage managers, et cetera, and people who do the lighting, and they want those, they want you to be perfect. there’s often a translation. They don’t want you to change a word.

Q: When you do the show, you’ve had it before all these different audiences. Do they react differently, or do they already have a conception given that “Sex in the City” is a global phenomenon?

Candace Bushnell: I’d say the audiences are pretty consistent, across all of these different countries. The audience is mostly women. They are well-heeled and intelligent. They’ve got it together. It’s a girls’ night out. They love it. They find the show really inspiring. They all pretty much laugh at the same things. there’s some parts that are maybe a little sad or poignant, and then there are other parts that are funny, and it’s pretty consistent.

Q: Did you find that when “Sex in the City” came out, first the column,  the book, then the TV series, did you find that you were being driven to become a more of, how do I say it, a primary personality, as opposed to somebody who was reflecting on other people, or did that all come very naturally?

Candace Bushnell: it all came very naturally. I always feel like writers are as interesting and Important as actors, so that was not ever, there wasn’t, I didn’t feel like I was reporting on people. I always felt like I had a voice, and that’s really the most important thing. Having a voice and a point of view.

Q: A lot of times writers don’t think of themselves as the primary person, but the person that’s reporting on them or in the background reflecting on them, or more insular, or not so much but more inward. Then there are other writers who are the most outward people you could ever meet. Salman Rushdie is somebody who’s a very stage-friendly person. You have these writers, personalities out there, happy to get in front of a crowd, and then there’s other writers that are terrified of it.

Candace Bushnell: No, I’m definitely in your camp.

Q: I came to New York in ’78, so we have a lot in common. We crossed a lot of paths and different people. Do you find that now that you’re doing this stage show and you’re rediscovering people you hadn’t seen in a long time? Or Do you find that people are coming to you that you never realized identified with Sex and the City to such a degree?

Candace Bushnell:  Sex and the City has a huge audience and I have had so many women from all over the world come up to me and tell me the impact that Sex and the City has had on their lives. It’s given them a different way to think, a different way to think about their lives , and that’s really probably one of the most rewarding aspects of it is that it’s touched so many women’s lives and it’s very important to so many women.

Q: Do you think it brought sex itself to the forefront in a way that hadn’t been done much before?

Candace Bushnell: It’s not about sex. It’s not about sex. It’s about real friendships, relationships, all of that. It’s about being an independent woman.

Q: I realize that for a lot of women, Sex and the City reframed the discussion about friends and how women react to each other as friends and how they bond or don’t bond or where conflicts come in. Do people come to you to be very confessional?

Candace Bushnell: Yes. I do have people who come up to me and say, have I got a dating story for you? I always want to hear it. I do. You know, it’s such, it’s really like such rich material. And, you know, I just wrote a piece for New York Magazine about dating over 60.

Q: I just read that.

Candace Bushnell: relationships are important. relationships are still, you know, one of the big topics of importance to people. Even if you don’t necessarily want to be in a relationship yourself, you’re still interested in relationships. That’s what I found. I could be wrong about that, but, so yes, people do come up to me and tell me their stories and I’m, honestly, usually fascinated. I find people fascinating.

Q: Do you think you’ve become a bit of a therapist to people not in necessarily a direct way, but when people meet you in a way you’ve helped them define themselves in some sense?

Candace Bushnell: Probably not. I’m usually pretty straightforward. Sometimes people say, what should I do to find a relationship? I just say, don’t bother. I can be sarcastic about it. I don’t think people really come to me as a therapist, but they do like to tell their stories. I think that’s wonderful.

Q: In some ways, you were able to, in writing those characters, describe archetypes of relationships or archetypes of dynamics that occur between women in various ways. Obviously, I’m only speaking secondhand, but I’ve met a few women in my day. I find that people react that way with “Sex in the City.” I have the complete DVD set, so I’ve watched a lot of episodes.

Candace Bushnell: Wow! That’s crazy!

Q: I interviewed the actors that played your character in the movie and also got to talk to Darren Star, the series creator.

Candace Bushnell: Yes, I love Darren.

Q: That was a fascinating day, It opened up my eyes to the series. When you wrote that New York Magazine article about dating after 60 what revelations did you find or have obviously thought about your men friends and whatnot? Have men said things to you since that article came out that you didn’t expect or did expect?

Candace Bushnell: As I like to say, I think that women have changed a lot and men really haven’t. I talked to a lot of men when I was writing “Sex and the City” and I always talked to a lot of men. They’re pretty straightforward about saying the things that women want to hear. The biggest change in dating, I think, has more to do with the fact that everybody’s on their phone all the time viewing their social media, but more importantly, it’s things like gaming and porn. I always say this, technology is largely created by men for men to take their money and I feel like a lot of men are lost to the internet.

Q: I have a different perspective with have one foot in the analog world and one foot in digital. In think you do as well. It’s a very different point of view in many ways.

Candace Bushnell: Yes. I think that that’s really what’s going on. The other thing is, one time, 60 years ago, people needed to be in relationships. There was no soup for one and now people can be single and they are single. I always look back to, I don’t know if you remember this, but, a family of five or six was sharing one bathroom. Now everybody has their own bathroom.

Q: They don’t have the big families like they used to.

Candace Bushnell: They don’t have big families and it’s much easier to be single now and so a lot of people are.

Q: In fact, millennials and younger people don’t have sex as much as our generation did.

Candace Bushnell: That’s supposedly true. I’ve heard that too. But you know what? There’s a lot of other things to do now.

Q: Do you think people are diverted by all these other interests and so sex has less prominence, and there’s less interest in procreation for sure.

Candace Bushnell: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that because I don’t know. It’s just a theory. There are many more things that take up time in people’s lives. You didn’t have to answer a whole bunch of emails or a whole bunch of texts back then. You didn’t have to be working 24-7. I remember weekends in the ’90s just spending the weekend with friends and not even thinking about work. Now, I think that would never happen.

Q: One of the lessons that certainly came out of the ‘70s, ‘80s, even into the ‘90s, is that you had to get out and meet people. You had to go to events and do things. You couldn’t just sit at home. you didn’t have the devices. You had to get on the phone and say, where am I going to meet up with other people and actually do it?

Candace Bushnell: Yes. You had to see people in real life…

Q: Getting back to your show, how many drafts did it go through before you finally refined it to the version that will be seen in December?

Candace Bushnell: I was tweaking it. It was six weeks working on it at Bucks County Playhouse. I was probably tweaking and changing it every day, 20, 40 drafts. It’s jut a constant kind of tweaking. But then, once I got it down, that’s what we use. It’s basically our bible. There’s like one version that’s a little bit shorter and then there’s a longer version that’s like 10 minutes longer, but it’s pretty much the same.

Q: Given that you’re performing, do you find yourself able to come back home and then want to write or do you find yourself having the performance bug in you and it makes it harder to sit down and write?

Candace Bushnell: I find it harder to sit down and write. It’s harder to find the time. I used to write for six hours a day, six days a week. Some days it’d be like eight hours. Now, I just think, do I feel like I have that much time?

Q: It’s good to go out because you’ve got to exercise yourself. You’ve got to make your body function in many ways.

Candace Bushnell: Yes. I also think it’s very healthy to go out and interact with other people. I still go out five days a week. Sometimes when I’m in the city I’ll go to a few different things. Sometimes I do things or if I’m in the Hamptons, you know, just go to dinner with some friends.

Q: I noticed your area code is in Connecticut?

Candace Bushnell: Yes, I had a house in Connecticut.

Q: Oh, but you don’t have the house anymore, so you’re back to being based in Manhattan?

Candace Bushnell: No, New York and Sag Harbor.

Q: Ah, I love Sag Harbor.

Candace Bushnell: It’s actually a really pretty good place to be.

Q: I got to appreciate Sag Harbor in many different ways. Are you involved with the movie theater there or any of those arts organizations? There’s some great ones out there like The Church  [a home for art and creativity on the East End in Sag Harbor]. I’ve been friendly with noted Sag Harbor artist and organizer April Gornick. I get notices of things going on out there. I keep wanting to get out there.

Candace Bushnell: Yes, she’s amazing. She’s done so much.

Q: She’s really in charge out there, very much so. Are you going to return with your show out there?

Candace Bushnell: Well, I did.  I probably do it once a summer. I did it at WestHampton Beach, and at the Church. I did it at Canoe Place Inn and at Guildhall. Usually, I do it once a summer.

Q: with this show that’s coming up, is this kind of a relaunching of a tour or setting yourself up to have more of a residency? What’s the plans following this show?

Candace Bushnell: Well, I have an agent who books these shows. it’s a whole different category. There are theaters all over the country, and they book various shows, and Adler Hall, and they have different programs, so they are one-night only kinds of performances.

For tickets go to: https://www.candacebushnell.com/news-and-events/