Feeling Seen

At 24, Megan Suri couldn't have been more than 10 years old when she first laid eyes on Parminder Nagra as Jess in BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM. Here was a girl and a family that resembled her; and Jess was the talented, desired center of her own story. Now, Megan stars in IT LIVES INSIDE, which hits theaters this weekend (9/22/23). Then, Jordan will have one quick thing about how the Criterion Channel is...

In 2013's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , Walter is a quiet outsider with an active fantasy life but not much of a real life beyond his job. But through the movie (and in service of his work) he embraces a great adventure and grows in the process. Comedian Myq Kaplan relates to both versions of Walter -- the awkward, quiet creative mind and the self-assured, evolved adventurer. And in today's ep...

Actor and comedian Cameron Esposito was in her 20s when BOUND first came to her attention, and to this day it remains not only stuck in her memory, but also extremely formative. Gina Gershon as Corky was undeniably gorgeous while also being unquestionably masc.  It's a pairing that's still relatively rare on screen, almost 30 years after the Wachowskis made BOUND. Jordan's one quick thing is about...

Sammi Cohen has gotten their directing career off to a rousing start with CRUSH and now YOU ARE SO NOT INVITED TO MY BAT MITZVAH. Both movies focus on middle or high schoolers learning more about themselves, so perhaps its no surprise that Sammi has brought us a trio of characters who, at various ages, are "coming of age" through life-changing experiences of gender, friendship, loss, success, and...

When Emma Seligman's debut film SHIVA BABY premiered in on a Brooklyn rooftop in 2021, Jordan was there to see the event first-hand. That was arguably the start of a whirlwind of movie deals and news that led straight to BOTTOMS, Seligman's new film, co-written by Rachel Sennott (who stars in both films). On this week's episode, Emma and Jordan talk through that trajectory as they compare notes on...

Stewart Thorndike made a splash with LYLE in 2014, establishing her as an exciting new voice in horror. Her latest film. BAD THINGS, further solidifies this, with its focus squarely on (queer) female characters who aren't afraid to be messy. In Mike Leigh's play ABIGAIL'S PARTY , filmed for television in 1977, Beverly Moss is the life of the party...whether the party wants her to be or not! Then,...

Director William J. Stribling saw THE BIRDCAGE as a 7 or 8 year old, and it instantly became his favorite, watched on repeat. At its center is director and drag club owner Armand Goldman (or is it Coleman?), played by the incomparable Robin Williams. Decades later, Will is a comedy director himself, whose latest film (full disclosure: it was written by this show's producer, Marissa) is THE MIRROR...

Carter Smith is a queer horror icon, even if all his films aren't highlighting explicitly queer relationships. A master of depicting complex male...friendships?, he continues that trend in his new film, THE PASSENGER. And perhaps that instinct got its start watching Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge . Much has been said -- and not all of it in alignment -- about the gay subtext of Freddy...

On her podcast, TV, I SAY WITH ASHLEY RAY , Ashley has no pretentions about good entertainment. But once upon a time, she was a young Bergman scholar (and even, briefly, a beat poet). This entire trajectory of self-examination and unapologetic devotion to her own interests might just have its roots in Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman's 2004 opus, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, and its fem...

Manuel Betancourt's new book is called THE MALE GAZED: ON HUNKS, HEARTTHROBS, AND WHAT POP CULTURE TAUGHT ME ABOUT (DESIRING) MEN , but he's feeling seen by two of the brightest stars of '90s and '00s Hollywood. He tells Jordan about what spoke to him in Natalie Portman's Alice from CLOSER (2006, d. Mike Nichols) and Julia Roberts's Jules in MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING  (1997, d. P.J. Hogan).  Then,...

Jessica St. Clair is a writer and actor who you've definitely seen or heard, be it on her own shows with Lennon Parham ( Best Friends Forever, Playing House ), countless TV and movie appearances, or on her podcast with June Diane Raphael, The Deep Dive . She and Jordan bond over the messy, weird details of deep best friendship across lots of movies and TV shows, but especially past Feeling Seen fa...

This episode originally aired in January 2022. We were delighted to have actor Isabelle Fuhrman as one of our earliest guests. She may be best known for playing the titular role in the Orphan franchise (and since this interview she's gone on to stun us with Orphan: First Kill ); Sheroes  is in theaters now; and she played Clove in the Hunger Games movies.  In this episode, she talks with Jordan ab...

In 2001's Two Can Play That Game , Vivica A. Fox plays Shanté Smith, a confident, self-possessed woman who narrates the film by barreling the camera and telling the audience just how it is. A middle-schooler at the time, Shar Jossell (now a journalist and the co-host of We See Each Other: The Podcast ), heard Shanté speaking to her in more ways than one. And what she heard changed her life. That,...

Before she was directing movies about iconic figures (becoming something of an icon herself in the process) Mary Harron was a journalist. And before that, she was inspired by characters like Rosalind Russell's Hildy Johnson in HIS GIRL FRIDAY -- a woman who is valued for her incomparable skill and undeniable smarts, who can't quite seem to leave her complicated profession behind for what society d...

At just 18, actor Laya DeLeon Hayes already has a decade in film, television, and video games under her belt. She voiced Doc McStuffins, won a BAFTA for God of War Ragnarök , and co-starred with Queen Latifah on The Equalizer . Now she's helming a film of her own in Bomani J. Story's  The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster , a reimagining of Frankenstein that premiered at SXSW and is now in theaters...

Long before becoming a celebrated author of A STAR IS BORED and the newly-released BIG GAY WEDDING, Byron Lane was a small-town Louisiana kid who dreamed of life in the big city. More than dreaming of it, he felt like it was where he was meant to be. Which is why he felt so seen by Bette Midler's switched-at-birth country twin, Sadie Ratliff, in the 1988 Midler & Tomlin comedy BIG BUSINESS. Then,...

When award-winning comedian Liz Glazer watched The Wonder Years as a kid, she thought she was seeing, for the first time a kid just like her: one who knew even as he lived his life that he'd one day look back on all this wistfully. This simple (mis?)interpretation of the show foreshadowed the type of adult she'd grow into: a comedian who is able to weave tragic experience into comedy with ease.  A...

If you've never seen ELECTION, or haven't seen it in a while, you might think of it as a quirky tale of a try-hard shrew-in-training who cares too much about winning an election. But take a closer look and you'll find that Tracy is by no means the villain of the piece. For film commentator, festival programmer, and The Final Girls co-host Anna Bogutskaya -- whose new book is called UNLIKEABLE FEMA...

From her roles in a semi-autobiographical sitcom in 1996 ( Life's Work ) to The Parent Trap to Abbott Elementary , Lisa Ann Walter has played a lot of different kinds of strong, brassy women. And even though standards of beauty and acceptance in Hollywood are always changing, those winds haven't always blown in her favor. But what makes an icon iconic is her unwavering commitment to being her own...

Elle Woods is an iconic character, but not an obvious one from Tre'vell  Anderson, author of the new book, We See Each Other: A Black. Trans Journey Through TV and Film . Leave it to the effervescent Tre'vell to bring their signature FANTI gray-area mindset to their Feeling Seen character choice! In this episode, Tre'vell and Jordan look at what it is about Elle Woods that offered Tre'vell a glimp...

Kara Brown's confidence and self-assuredness have taken her far in her career as a writer, and those are qualities she shares with Katharine Hepburn's Tracy in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY . Of course, with that self-possession comes a set of assumptions others make about you, and getting held to a special standard. Jordan and Kara get into all of this,  bond over their shared memories of the heyday of...

Balancing the dark and the light sides of coming of age, womanhood, and navigating the social order is something filmmaker Nida Manzoor always strives for in her projects (like WE ARE LADY PARTS and POLITE SOCIETY , in theaters now). And she wants to shout one of her biggest inspirations from the rooftops: SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS (1998, Tamara Jenkins), which centers on high-schooler Vivian Abromow...

Director Catherine Hardwicke's latest film is MAFIA MAMMA, and you probably know her as the director of TWILIGHT, LORDS OF DOGTOWN, or THIRTEEN. But did you know that she got her start as a production designer, and that she production designed TANK GIRL? Well, this was after she got her degree in architecture. All this, plus dressing like a building, dealing with on-set toxic events, directing Mon...

Co-star of the new horror film Malum (currently in theaters) Clarke Wolfe knew she related to  Grace Hart in the theater when she first saw 2000's Miss Congeniality . That resonance wasn't all positive. In this conversation, she shares her own inner misfit feelings, and explains how and why she became her own Michael Caine (er, Victor Melling).  *** with Jordan Crucchiola and Clarke Wolfe Help sup...

A.V. Rockwell's feature debut won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year. Now it's in theaters, and anyone who goes to see it won't be able to miss the love and honesty in her depiction of New York City. So perhaps it's not surprising that she brought us a character from another New York City coming-of-age movie (albeit about a different borough than her native Queens). It's Troy, the...