Interview: Mary Bronstein and Rose Byrne on Molding an Immersive Experience of Modern Motherhood with ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’
Like most great films, writer-director Mary Bronstein came up with the idea of an exceptional second feature film, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, when something personal happened in her life. When her daughter was young, she became ill and Bronstein took her daughter to California for treatment for eight months, staying in a hotel as the treatments were slowly taking effect. Isolated and needing to vent, she wrote If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, which would mark her return as a director after her 2008 debut film, Yeast, which co-starred notable names you’ve might’ve heard of in Greta Gerwig, Josh and Benny Safdie (who are frequent collaborators with Bronstein’s husband, filmmaker Ronald Bronstein). In creating this one of a kind film, Bronstein wrote the role of a lifetime that required the versatility of an actress to go from comedic to dramatic within the blink of an eye, and that’s when she knew there was only one person to bring Linda to life; actress Rose Byrne.
For most modern audiences, Byrne has become known for her stellar comedic work in films like Bridesmaids, Neighbors, and Spy, but she’s also in the same time become the face of a horror franchise with the various chapters of Insidious, her television work opposite Glen Close on the FX show Damages, and her more dramatic work over the years in Marie Antoinette, Sunshine, Adam, and The Goddess of 1967, which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for in 2000. Along with dozens of other film, television, and theater performances to show off her impressive range, Byrne was the perfect choice to play Linda, showcasing a suffocating, nerve-racking, hilarious display of emotions within this towering achievement of acting within some of the most immersive filmmaking of the year. It’s unlike any film you’ll see this year, and as our own Martin Tsai said in his review out of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Byrne gives “a mesmerizing performance” while Bronstein’s film is “a stunning portrait that may leave you questioning the blurred line between sanity and insanity.”
In my recent conversation with Bronstein and Byrne, we spoke about the origin of this project, connecting with Linda’s journey within the film, and how various audiences are taking in the film since they debuted the film back at Sundance and screened it at other film festivals at Telluride, Toronto, New York, Austin, Mill Valley, Middleburg, and everywhere else in between. We also talked about being a mother in the modern age, zoning out as a parent, different reactions they’ve heard from men and women who’ve seen the film, working with the most difficult actors of their careers; the scene stealing hamsters, and how getting an obscure pet is a really bad idea for a child. In-synched and completing each other’s sentences, Bronstein and Byrne were absolute delight when talking about their film, which saw them both recently get Gotham nominations for Best Director, Original Screenplay, and Outstanding Lead Performance. Much like the long film festival season and roll out to theaters, here’s hoping for a longer season where the accolades continue to roll in for this dynamic duo.
Ryan McQuade: You both are film festival experts at this point.
Mary Bronstein: We were just saying that.
Rose Byrne: What do you want to know? Walk me through, tell us what you need. (all laugh)
MB: We’ll walk you through it. We started at Sundance. It’s been nine months since the Sundance premiere, which sounds about right, but also seems like yesterday, but also seems like a long time.
RM: It’s been great though, right?
MB: It’s been great. It’s been very full and great. We can’t ask for anything more than the reception that we’ve been getting.
RB: Yeah, it’s been great. Yeah, really good.
RM: Because I was at Telluride and Toronto and New York and now here, and I’ve just seen this play as it’s gone on and just how audiences have reacted to it. How have you guys felt since Sundance to those different reactions at various screenings? Have you picked up different things that people told you that you weren’t even expecting when you were making the film?
MB: I would say that what’s been very exciting for me as a filmmaker is to see the critical response and the audience response just build and build and build and build over this time period. That’s what’s been so wonderful about it, it’s been a challenge having such a long festival run, but at the same time, that’s what’s been the reward because it’s seeing it build in real time. And I think something for me that’s been unexpected and a joy is seeing how many young people are really excited about this movie. And at first I was trying to think I didn’t… Because it hadn’t occurred to me. And then I realized, oh, it’s because these are young, and I’m old, so when I say young people, anyone under 30. But basically because it’s something that they haven’t seen before. And I think that big studios have miscalculated what younger people want. They don’t want to be spoon-fed. They don’t want to be pandered to, they want something new just like I wanted something new when I was that age and Rose wanted something new, and they also want to leave their houses and they want to go.
RB: We don’t want to leave. We don’t.
MB: We’re done. (laughs)
RB: We’re done. (laughs)
MB: They want to go out to the movies and they want to socialize and they want to go. And so I’ve had mostly amazing interactions with people, not just that. Also with men and of course with mothers, but also of women of all types that aren’t mothers. It’s been-
RB: No, I agree. It’s just exciting to see. It’s been wild to see it play differently to different audiences. The film played like a raucous horror almost at Toronto. It was like a college crowd and it was wow, interactive. And then in New York Film Festival’s very sophisticated and it was almost like-
MB: They got all the humor.
RB: They got so much of the humor, they were laughing from the jump because they knew they can, it was a sophisticated crowd. And then in Berlin, it was a cerebral, as you can imagine, very sophisticated film going crowd. So I just think it’s like the film just has so many, it’s like a wonderful kind of…
MB: It ends up pointing out to me that people are picking up on all the different facets of the film because it has all of those things in it.
RB: Exactly.
MB: And so depending on who you are as an individual, that’s the part that you’re going to pick up on the most. And it’s been very… I’m so fascinated to know how this… It’s like last night, I was in Chicago and that was a fabulous crowd. It was a skewing very young crowd. And they were very excited.
And now here (Middleburg), we just had this amazing women’s luncheon where it felt wonderful to be in this big room with women of different ages and felt very… I was very amped up by it.
RB: Yeah, I know. It was really inspiring.
MB: And so I’m very excited to see how this crowd is going to react.
RB: Exactly. This is a very different audience.
RM: No, for sure. Mary, I’m going to start with you. This film is such an original idea, it’s so well-thought-out and I was blown away when I saw it. When did the idea of this start forming and when did you start thinking about Rose as the one to be able to carry this project for you all the way to the finish line?
MB: Wow, thank you. Yeah. So the project first started for me, believe it or not, as I’m sitting here across from you, about eight years ago now. We wrapped about two years ago. So then the six years before that, it was me writing it and trying to get it made. But where it first started, the seed of the idea came from a personal experience. It came from when my daughter was seven years old, she became quite ill and we had to go from New York to California for a specific treatment that she needed. But my husband needed to stay home for work and I ended up out there with her for eight months, which was not what I was expecting.
The doctor when I first called said, “oh, six weeks, eight weeks at the worst”. It was eight months. And I didn’t do all the things that Linda does in the film, not all of them, but I did have to have some escape. And my escape was going into the bathroom at night when the lights would go off and she really had this machine. And in real life it was just these floating numbers in the dark. And then as you saw in the film, I make it expressive by flooding the room with a very oppressive red light because that’s how it felt.
And in that bathroom, I’m sitting in there, I’m drinking wine, I’m binge-eating. I’m doing a lot of some of the things that she does in the movie to try to escape. But what I was trying to stave off is this existential crisis that I was feeling of disappearing into the task that I had with my daughter. And out of that, I started writing the script literally from there. And then over a two-year period refined it. And when I finished it, I realized that I had written something that was going to be a very tall order for somebody to execute as a performer, because as you saw from watching the movie, the movie is the character. The character is the movie.
And so Rose was actually always at the top of my list because she has this innate comedic understanding and ability and can understand how to play even the most subtle comedy beats that are in my script. And the tone of my script is really, and the film itself as it came out is really a tightrope. If you fall too much into the comedy, you can lose the serious themes. And then if you fall too over to the other side, it can’t sustain itself. It’s too dark. And so I needed somebody who could walk that tightrope, the very smallest of actresses.
And then I also wanted somebody who people would look at when her face comes on the screen, would have a kindness towards just innately because that would allow me as a tool, to take the audience further. And Rose has all those things. And so I was lucky enough that she wanted to do it because it was a very big ask.
RM: And her versatility as a performer shines.
MR: Yeah, we’re just going to talk about you.
RM: Sorry Rose, we’re going to talk about you. I know you’re not big on compliments.
RB: I’m getting better. (all laughs)
MB: You’re getting better, you’re getting better.
RB: I am getting better.
MB: You’re going to be unstoppable.
RB: I’m just sucking it up.
RM: Rose, that is a tall order to ask once you read the script and everything. But for you, connecting with Linda and then talking with Mary about this character, obviously the personal connection in the screenplay is there, but then what do you see when you’re reading it? Do you from your own personal experiences as a mother and see similarities and the dissimilarities between yourself and Linda, and how do you bring those into the performance?
RB: Well, the script was just extraordinary. It was so incendiary. It just spread like fire. It had an extraordinary symmetry to it, the script, and a lot of hidden things in there. Many times, I put it down and was like, “What? Hold on a second.” Or I had to, when it’s revealed, she’s a therapist. I went back five times, like, “Am I reading this correctly?”
MB: Did I miss that?
RB: Wait a second.
RM: I did that as well. I was like, “Wait, did I miss something?” The reveal of her walking to her office is great.
MB: That’s one of my favorites.
RB: It’s so funny and I’ve spoken about, but there was innate humor in the script as well, that the hamster, for instance, is described as Jack Nicholson from The Shining trying to break through the wall. So that immediately spoke to Mary’s tone, which was very unique. The tone is, she’s threading a really fine needle because there’s horror tropes in there, but it’s obviously very funny. There’s stuff there that’s very funny. The higher the stakes are, the funnier something has the potential to be. If they’re allowed to, if you’re going to try to do that. And Mary was always clearly wanting to show that side, to her point of keeping everyone on this journey, which is a challenging one, is through humor, which is something I obviously love to do and try to find and find it. I think it’s really hard. Comedy’s really hard. I think it’s a tightrope, particularly in this movie because it’s that tricky kind of tone.
MB: Because it’s not jokes.
RB: Exactly.
MB: Sometimes it’s just your expression that is the point of humor.
RB: Yeah, exactly. But what an opportunity. I just thought, “Oh my goodness, this is an extraordinary opportunity and I’m terrified, and of course I’m going to do it.” And my husband, Bobby, read it and he was like, “Oh, you have to do this. She’s saying something. This is a real voice. She’s got something to say.” And that’s really rare. It’s rare to get a movie like this made.
And so we just began the journey, which I’ve spoken with before. We sat for over five or six weeks at Mary’s kitchen table and just talked as we dropped off our kids at school and just went through. We went through the script from page one and just combed through. And it was such a gift to have that time that we could really peel back the onion on the character. And of course, I related to a lot of it being a parent, very much capturing the relentlessness of being a parent. And obviously I’ve not been in this specific situation. And then beyond that, I was just fascinated with how the character is relating to this situation because obviously very different from myself, Rose. And that’s something we developed, was figuring out who she was.
RM: Mary, I think one of the most fascinating choices I’ve seen in cinema this year, which is for us to connect to Linda’s journey as a mother, as a person from the get-go. You take this child who we hear about this entire time and it’s really the driving force of everything Linda does. The sacrifices, the chaos, the anger, the frustration, the exhaustion. And we do not see her until the final shot of this film.
MB: Correct.
RM: So could you talk about making that decision? Was that from the get-go as well?
MB: That was from the get go.
RM: Rose, I know that you spoke about how she was always there when shooting? I assumed that helped in the process of shooting the film.
RB: Yeah, she was always there.
MB: Yes, because there’s a difference between acting and pretending. And so if I wasn’t to give her the actual scene partner, if I was to say, “Do these lines and pretend and I’m just going to put the voice in later,” then it’s putting Rose in a terrible position where she’s not reacting against anything. She’s just pretending, which is so different from acting, which is reacting. And so I did that for the daughter who’s played amazingly by Delaney Quinn. And then also whenever the character’s on the phone, the actor is always there on the phone.
But as far as the decision to not show the daughter, that was probably my first conceptual choice that I made while sitting down to write the first very first draft. And it was something that I had never seen in a movie before. So that interested me as an experiment, but I had two reasons for it, and one is purely conceptual, which is that I wanted to put the audience so radically in Linda’s reality so that at a certain point in the movie, the viewer might feel like they’re literally inside her head like they are experiencing her reality. And to do that, I use close-ups to lock you out of any other stimuli, but then also to not have the daughter present. Because if the daughter is present in a scene or even if you just see her and you have her in your mind as a real little girl, your sympathies are going to go with the child because that’s just how we’re wired.
And I needed the audience’s sympathies and empathies to stay all the time with Linda because even though the things that she’s doing are questionable and sometimes outright wrong and are dangerous, it needs to be in order for the story to work and for the audience to go all the way with me, can’t lose. Can’t lose being in her reality entirely. And Linda also can’t see her daughter in a figurative sense as anything other than an obligation or something that’s victimizing her, something that’s happening to her, something that she’s being trapped by. And so I decided to make that figurative, not seeing literal. And then we have the reward at the end, which I call a hopeful ending where there’s hope when she is able to finally see her daughter for what she is, which is just a beautiful little innocent girl. It’s the first time we get to see her.
RM: When I was watching the film, it struck me that Linda was zoning out and going to this other world. I had lunch with my mom a couple of weeks ago, and I saw her do this exact thing. And in the film, it’s like going to this almost ethereal place. I wanted to ask you both about if you’ve experienced that in your own life, and if you talked about it when bringing that into your conversations about crafting Linda in these sequences?
MB: Yeah, it’s a disassociation that one has when the job of being a parent demands you to be present 100% of the time. A human being cannot live up to that standard. No human being can, but we’re told that you’re supposed to be able to just because you had a baby or you’re taking care of somebody, that you’re supposed to be present and nobody can do that. And so we’ve talked about this, you find these pockets in the day where you can just zone out. The first one happens in the film when she’s eating, she’s shoving this cheese in her mouth, the daughter’s in the bathroom. She’s like, “I have maybe a couple minutes, I’m just going to…” And then we see that sort of thing progress as the movie goes on.
But for me, yeah, it’s like you’re at the pool with your kid and watch me do this jump, watch me do this, jump, watch me do this jump. And the one second that you zone out and you look away, you didn’t see me do the jump. And every kid and parent can relate to that. And that’s where it happens to me where it’s just like sometimes I just can’t be present. But they catch you in that one second.
RB: It is funny how many people have said, I called my mother, I called my mother.
MB: Or they’ve said, I’m going to call my wife and say I’m sorry.
RB: I wasn’t expecting that, or I’m going to call my wife. Yeah, it’s so funny that it’s brought out these feelings of people relating to that, whether it’s relating to the child or relating to being a child or being that parent.
RM: Or it’s just because they don’t see films like this. There are a lot of films about postpartum depression, but there’s not a lot, I think, about parenting in the modern age.
MB: No, there’s not. And how isolating it is.
RM: Rose, you worked with a great ensemble here in A$AP Rocky and Conan O’Brien, these wonderful actors, but there’s a scene stealer in this that you worked with and that is the hamster. Rose, could you talk about working with them as a performer? Because it’s one thing to read it on the page, it’s another thing to work with it, the mechanics of working with them must’ve been tricky as well?
RB: Well, one of my kids really wants a chameleon.
RM: Oh, here we go.
MB: Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
RM: That’s a no go for me.
RB: They are like, “Can I get a chameleon? I really want to get a chameleon. Let’s go to the pet store and look at the chameleon. Isn’t he cute?”
MB: No. That’s how it starts.
RB: He goes up to the people in the pet store and they won’t let him hold it, but he’s so clever. He’ll be like, “What does it feel like? What does it feel like?”
MB: This is what happened with us and the hamster. Yeah, it started with, “can I look at the hamster?” “No.”
RB: So it has a resonance, but like I say on the page, it was already described in this very visual, hysterical reference of Jack Nicholson. But it’s one of those relenting things as a parent that you give in and you know shouldn’t give in. And it’s funny. Already, it’s funny, you’re like, “Oh, no. Oh, she did it. Oh, she did it. Oh goodness me.” And then shooting it, there’s elements that were very technical to be honest, because there were these wonderful puppeteers that had made this extraordinary puppet of a hamster. And then we had a real hamster.
MB: And a real hamster.
RB: So there was a lot going on. The heads of department, there’s the hamster people, there’s the puppet people.
MB: The hamster people. (laughs)
RB: There’s the animal wranglers, there’s Delaney, and she’s a kid who’s only allowed so much time to shoot.
MB: She was having so much fun.
RB: She was in her element. And then we’re driving, so there’s a stunt coordinator. So it’s just one of those quite technical. And we shot in a few different locations as well. So wanting to just piece it all together and knowing that there was a comedic element to it as well. And then the bit of the end when Josh Pais gets out and confronts her and the rear end. So it was piecing it all together. It was challenging trying to put it together.
MB: It was challenging. It was challenging. So there was a real little guy and then the rest are puppets. And I got to tell you, the real guy was the biggest pain in the ass.
RB: He was fast. He was fast.
RM: So he’s not getting the call for the next time you two collaborate?
RB: No. (laughs)
MB: Was definitely the most difficult performer that I worked with on the film.
RB:Yeah, he really was.
MB: Wouldn’t do what I wanted. Had a lot of demands.
RM: He’s really not going to like reading this interview. (all laughs)
MB: No. I think his name was Butternut. And Butternut, I can’t blame Butternut because that’s his thing.
RB: He read the script, he knew what he had to do.
MB: He knew what he had to do and he wouldn’t do it. And no. So we had the real guy, you can’t direct a hamster. And so I knew that it had to be puppets. And so then I was like, “If I’m going to lean into doing puppets, I’m not going to do it where I’m trying to trick the audience. This is the real guy, this is a puppet, or whatever it is. If you notice, it’s a puppet. It’s a puppet.” Because I’m playing with surrealism and absurdities in the film in a lot of different ways. And so that allows me to do that.
And I think if I was to just say, no, it has to be a real animal the whole time, it would not have the same effect. I wouldn’t be able to have that scene.
RM: Thank you guys so much. It was wonderful talking to you both.
RM: Thank you. Thank you.
MB: Thank you, Ryan.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is currently in select theaters from A24.
- ‘Fallout’ Season Two Review: Bring Back My Ghouls [A-] - December 16, 2025
- AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 319 – Oscars Retrospective of the 93rd Academy Awards - December 15, 2025
- On the Shelf: ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’ trilogy, ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,’ ‘David Byrne’s American Utopia,’ ‘Walking Tall’ and the ‘Babe’ Films Arrive on 4K Blu-ray Releases for Week of December 15 - December 15, 2025
2026 Oscar Predictions: FILM EDITING and CINEMATOGRAPHY (December) 
Online Association of Female Film Critics (OAFFC): Eva Victor Dominates with Five Nominations for ‘Sorry, Baby’ 
2026 Oscar Predictions: DOCUMENTARY FEATURE and INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM (December) 
The Oscars Move to YouTube Beginning in 2029