In Conversation

Susan Sarandon Doesn’t Meddle in Her Kids’ Lives . . . Except When She Does

The stars and director of The Meddler talk to VF.com about how the film reflects real life.
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Courtesy of Jaimie Trueblood/Sony Pictures Classics

“I am an unapologetic meddler,” says Susan Sarandon, star of the wonderful new film The Meddler, out now in New York and Los Angeles, and expanding to other cities in the coming weeks.

We spoke with Sarandon, her co-star Rose Byrne, and the film’s writer-director Lorene Scafaria (who based the film closely on her real-life experiences with her mother) at a Manhattan hotel last week, curious to find out just how close to real life this very credible, carefully observed, poignant comedy actually is. On the meddling front, Sarandon finds a kinship with her character, Marnie Minervini, a recently widowed New Jerseyite who relocates to Los Angeles to be closer to her depressed TV writer daughter, Lori (Byrne). “I'm a big believer in making mistakes,” Sarandon said. “So I don't interfere—unless they ask me—with big things. I just meddle in little things. I can't resist if I see an article or an album, or a book or an egg timer or a laundry bin, I send it or I bring it.”

Though she fakes it beautifully on-screen, Byrne says she hasn’t experienced much of that interference from her own parents. “I'm the youngest of four, so they're pretty busy. They're Australian in that sense. They’re very restrained and very low-key. Nothing’s a fuss and nothing’s a drama.” Scafaria, though, drew almost entirely from her own experiences. “I started writing it a month after my mom moved to L.A., because it really was like she moved to the Palazzo right across the street from the Grove, went across to the Grove, went to the Apple Store, got a phone, and just started calling me.” The movie plays out in much the same way, though we don’t actually see Marnie buy the phone.

Technology, particularly the way it makes people, especially family, theoretically accessible at all times, plays a significant role in the movie. Sarandon says she has similarly tried to embrace connectedness in her own life. “Definitely had to become a texter,” she responded when asked what technology she’s had to learn. “[My kids] were not answering the phone. I definitely text. Not so much e-mail, mostly texting.“

She also joined Instagram at the encouragement of her son, Jack, (“so we could send pictures back and forth,” Sarandon says), but without realizing the account would be public, chose the username “susanlovesjack.” “I think that’s why you have children, so they can keep you abreast to what’s going on culturally,” Sarandon explains. “Because look. You know, music and TV? I wouldn’t know about any of these things, because I don’t have a TV set. But I watch stuff with my youngest, especially. He’ll introduce me to Nathan for You. Stuff like that that I wouldn’t find.”

Byrne has found herself on the other side of that cultural divide many times. “[I’ll be] on the phone to my parents, telling them about a job I’m doing, and I’m trying to tell them the actors. ‘No, Mom, no. It’s... No, no. It’s Susan Sarandon!’ really loudly. And she'll write it down. ‘I’m just writing it down, I’m just writing it down. Where are you filming?’ And she’ll write that whole thing down so she can know what’s happening and tell everybody.”

Which is the kind of sweet, relatable child-parent exchange that Scafaria was going for in her film, though less from her point of view than from her mother’s. “Of course, it’s about a mom that can drive you crazy sometimes by caring too much, but it’s also about what she’s doing when you’re not calling her back. It’s about where it all comes from, how much of it is being a mom, and how much is being lonely. I never wanted to make it into a traditional mother-daughter movie, because that didn't interest me. I really just wanted to see it all from her perspective.”

Which is what’s she’s done with Marnie, who, in Scafaria and Sarandon’s hands, is one of the more indelible movie characters of the year so far, and certainly one of the most memorable and credibly rendered screen mothers of the last decade or so. Which is big, gushy praise for a small, reasonably intimate movie like this, but The Meddler can provoke swells of feeling like that, Scafaria has noticed. “What’s funny . . . with this movie, I guess because I was trying to be an open book, is that it makes other people feel like open books. We’ve had all these screenings and Q&As that have all been so lovely to see how people are all, ‘That's so my mom,’ or, ‘That's so me,’ or they can relate to it in one way or another. Even beyond that, it’s just people telling you their stories. It’s people saying, ‘My dad died when I was 18 and this is what happened.’ A lot of it feels like group therapy in a way.”

But, you know, fun group therapy.