Feeling Seen

In this, our finale episode, Jordan is reunited with a favorite actor and past interviewee ( Vulture, 2019 ), star of the new Netflix limited series BELOW , Mackenzie Davis! Mackenzie has chosen a pair of young women daring to express themselves in ways the culture might not be ready for: Helen (Carla Juri) from 2014's WETLANDS (clips are limited because the film is in German, fyi) and Teeny (Thor...

Did you know that Sean Gunn is a cinephile? On this episode, he tells Jordan about relating to Elliott Gould's character in the movie he calls his favorite: Robert Altman's 1974 gambling buddy bromance, CALIFORNIA SPLIT. Sean's new film is a prescient indie horror called APPOFENIACS , in select theaters this weekend! How does it all tie together? In the entertainment industry, every move is a gamb...

JJ Lippman is one of the youngest guests we've ever had on the show, but she also has a new movie (MIND GAMES), and a debut novel out ( MARITAL BLISS ). She's a fast-thinking, fast-talking, friendly go-getter...so imagine our surprise when she knew for sure that she felt seen by Julianne Moore's Carol White, the lead role in the 1995 Todd Haynes masterpiece SAFE. She and Jordan get into the suburb...

Action director (and co-host of the podcast ACTION FOR EVERYONE ) Liam O'Donnell is a great admirer of James Cameron's directing and editing prowess. But long before Liam had even an inkling of his future as a filmmaker, he knew there was something about THE TERMINATOR that really spoke to him. He and Jordan get into all of that -- plus the present and future of action cinema -- in this episode. T...

Laura Hudson , former editor at WIRED, the Verge, and more, got tired of telling people in power about the dangers of the tech they were building. Now, she's stopped warning them through journalism, and has pivoted to warning them through art -- like her comic book EXPLOIT, co-authored by Tim Leong . This week, she's telling Jordan about how her experiences writing about tech (and games and comics...

Journalist, podcast host, comics author, and all around movie enthusiast Rosie Knight has brought something rare to the table: a movie that was brand new to Jordan! From 1976, it's kind of a horror, it's kind of a slice of life, and it's totally unlike anything else you've seen. Starring a 14-year-old Jodie Foster and a deeply creepy Martin Sheen, it's THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE ! The...

Writer/Director Shoshana Rosenbaum grew up alongside Celine and Jesse from Richard Linklater's THE BEFORE TRILOGY. She was a recent American in Europe when BEFORE SUNRISE came out, a working 30-something when BEFORE SUNSET hit, and a married mom when BEFORE MIDNIGHT hit us with a dose of reality. She talks with Jordan about how she related to Celine (and the films as a whole) over that time, and h...

An earlier edit of this conversation was released in March of 2024, in conjunction with the release of director Gabriel Abrantes' AMELIA'S CHILDREN. Jack Haven comes from a creative family, and has been acting and creating music and art since childhood. In adulthood, success in their career has shown them the difference between being playing a role on screen and playing one in real life. Joe Buck,...

If you don't already know Daniel Bernhardt, he definitely looks familiar: you've seen the Swiss actor, stunt man, and martial artist in The Matrix Reloaded , John Wick , and even HBO's Barry . He starred in last year's delightful Deathstalker, J.J. Perry's Dave Bautista sci-fi film Afterburn , and Nobody 2, the recent Man of War . Daniel shares his connection to Sly Stallone's Rocky and his philos...

Samy Burch's new film, LATE FAME, stars Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee and opens this coming weekend; her big debut, MAY DECEMBER, earned her an Oscar nomination. This singular screenwriter has maybe always been a sicko at heart: she's relating to the one and only Thora Birch in GHOST WORLD, an artsy outsider teen who's trying to make sense of a the world she's constantly scrutinizing -- and being scr...

This interview originally aired in June of 2025; this version has been re-edited with new content from Jordan. Samantha Sloyan is a familar face from countless television shows ( Grey’s Anatomy , Rizzoli & Isles , The Pitt ), but that face will be particularly familiar to anyone who keeps up with the “Flanaverse” — movies and shows from Mike Flanagan, like Midnight Mass , The Fall of the House of...

With a glance at her lengthy filmography, you'd never know that Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay is barely in her twenties. THE SERPENT'S SKIN ( now available on digital and Blu-Ray ) is her sixth feature. And while her work is generally categorized as horror or fantasy, the undercurrent of romance there is a tell for the romantic saga that made her feel seen: TWILIGHT (the books, the movies...

Jeff Hiller is someone you've seen. If you haven't seen him in his Emmy-winning turn on SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE, you might have seen him on the (newly Emmy nominated) WIDOWS BAY or PLURIBUS (which has, since this interview took place, earned him his second Emmy acting nom). Or maybe you've seen his memoir, ACTRESS OF A CERTAIN AGE, on the bookstore shelves. If you don't know Jeff, now you will: in this...

Action star Scott Adkins has amassed a huge body of work from major franchises like John Wick and The Expendables to beloved action-world staples like the One Shot films, the Undisputed series, and the Accident Man movies. So who better than action movie expert Jordan to ask him about the films (and one very special comic book) that shaped his career? They talk Enter the Dragon , No Retreat, No Su...

This episode originally aired in December of 2023. It's a holiday weekend in the US so we figured...why not have Christmas in July and bring this one back from the vault? Since then, Matt Rogers has gone on to become even more of a star, co-hosting the now televised Culture Awards on Bravo (with his Las Culturistas partner Bowen Yang), and set to be one of the stars of Mr. & Mrs. Smith Season 2. C...

HUNGRY director James Nunn knew he wanted to be a director from the time he first watch a realistic dinosaur stomp onto the big screen in JURASSIC PARK. And even before that, he was inspired by another Steven Spielberg classic, 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' (the one where Indy teams up with his father, played by Sean Connery). A young James (named for James Bond, btw) borrowed his own dad's...

Michael Sarnoski is forging his own unique path in Hollywood, with projects small (PIG), big (A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE) and somewhere in between, as with his newest film, THE DEATH OF ROBIN HOOD. Sarnoski's latest stars Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer and lands in theaters this weekend (June 19, 2026). Sarnoski's creative path -- which has often involved his own unique take on a familar genre or charac...

The director of DINNER IN AMERICA and CAROLINA CAROLINE has a secret, but it's not hidden under a giant papier maché head. He's spent much of his life as an avid home recorder, generating thousands of songs. There's a direct line between that background and the earworm musical climax of his DINNER IN AMERICA. And when he saw 2014's FRANK , a quirky little movie about a band with no interest in sta...

Chandler Levack is another of the current class of talented Candian ladies directing fresh, original cinema. Her latest is MILE END KICKS (starring Barbie Ferreira)…and, at the same moment, ROOMMATES, a Happy Madison film starring Sadie Sandler. And she memorably broke onto screen with festival darling I LIKE MOVIES. She joins Jordan to give us a fresh look at our show’s most relatable multi-hyphe...

In her third feature ( Saccharine , in theaters now and on Shudder in July), Natalie Erika James tackles themes of obsession, disordered eating, and queerness. And while the two movies are VERY different (one a psychological horror, the other a quiet, BAFTA-winning drama), those are all themes Saccharine shares with My Summer of Love, Pawel Pawlikowski's 2004 film that introduced the world to Emil...

When Aimee Kuge set out to make her indie-horror-romance CANNIBAL MUKBANG , she knew that she didn't want her lead to be your typical final girl. And in her "feeling seen" pick, we find another female protagonist that is nothing like anyone else in film (and yet, maybe more like a real-life person than most film characters could ever hope to be). It's Patty, as played by Emily Skeggs, in Adam Cart...

Given that she’s the voice of one of the most iconic bad bitches in entertainment history — Pam Poovey from the long-running and groundbreaking ARCHER — it’s no surprise that Amber Nash felt seen by another bad bitch of media. Granted, she might not be the first no-nonsense professional woman that comes to mind. But Lorna Cole, Renee Russo’s character in LETHAL WEAPON 3, was the first feeling seen...

Writer/director Sophy Romvari' s feature debut, BLUE HERON, already has her being added to the shortlist of great Canadian auteurs. And on that list, she'd be alongside the late, great Jean-Marc Vallée, whose 2005 film C.R.A.Z.Y . captures some of the same deeply felt, retrospective family drama that Romvari captures in her own films. After this conversation, Jordan has one quick thing about illus...

Surprise! We're bringing you an extra episode this week in celebration of the final day of MaxFunDrive. Don't just sit back and listen -- become a part of Feeling Seen by supporting us now at maximumfun.org/joinfeelingseen . We'll make it worth your while! Drag superstar, singer-songwriter, trans icon, and now actor, Adore Delano has tried out (and mastered) a lot of different roles. And what bett...

It's MaxFunDrive! Help us hit our membership goals and keep this show going. Visit MaximumFun.org/JoinFeelingSeen now! It's not hard to imagine Elle Woods as an icon for a young girl in the '00s, but it might surprise you that Elle was a major inspiration to the screenwriter and co-producer behind the new horror film FACES OF DEATH, as well as HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE and CAM. Isa Mazzei talks wi...