It may seem like writer, director, and actor Eva Victor came out of nowhere with their first film, Sorry, Baby. Smart, funny, and quietly devastating, the film follows young professor Agnes as she deals with the aftermath of a traumatic event. It is a stunning debut, but like most powerhouse filmmakers, Victor didn’t just appear out of thin air and arrive in Hollywood.
After graduating from Northwestern, where they joined the improv team, Victor moved to New York. They immersed themselves in the city’s queer alt-comedy scene and started posting viral videos on Twitter. While in New York, they appeared in shows, podcasts, and open mics with the likes of Bowen Yang, Matt Rogers, Cole Escola, and Julio Torres — all queer comedians whose careers have taken off in the last five years.
“I cast a lot of people I know from that world,” Victor tells me. This includes E.R. Fightmaster and Kelly McCormack, the latter of whom also had a supporting role in Torres’ Problemista. “I think they are some of the best actors.”
I ask about Torres and Escola’s support of Sorry Baby specifically, both of whom have been on their own press journeys for projects they created. Escola is coming off a Tony win for their revisionist historical play about Mary Todd Lincoln called Oh, Mary, and Torres is currently on the Emmy campaign for his surrealist-comedy Fantasmas. “Julio has been so supportive and came to see it,” Victor tells me. “I always think of it as a departure from that New York alt-comedy world, but actually, as you list them, I’m in good company. They are the alien heroes of our time. I think Julio is a big inspiration because he has no rules. We should just have less rules instead of having to be one thing. Same with Cole. Literally.”
New to Victor’s world was actor Naomi Ackie, who plays Agnes’ best friend Lydie. The chemistry between the Mickey 17 alum and the new filmmaker was vital to making a crucial part of the story work. The relationship between Agnes and Lydie is the heart of Sorry, Baby, and had to feel relatable and real to its audience, something Victor was aware of during their first readings together.
“It was really effortless, which was such a blessing. But I think the second we read together, everyone was aligned. Like ‘Thank God. This movie is going to be okay.’ Because [our vibe] is all the movie really needed.”
They credit a lot of that chemistry to Ackie. “Naomi is so charismatic and insanely good that I honestly think I could have been a curtain and everyone would have been like, ‘You guys have a real vibe. It was genuinely so magical to have her in the movie. She elevated everything. She’s just a brilliant actor. Blink Twice and Mickey 17 hadn’t come out. I’d seen her in a couple of things, but her range is crazy. I saw her in the Whitney Houston movie, and I was like, ‘Okay, that’s you. And also Lady Macbeth is you. I still think she is made of particles of the universe in a way that we don’t know about yet.”
If she was 100% sure about her relationship with Ackie after their first reading together, she didn’t have that initial confidence that she should direct her first feature herself. Though Sorry, Baby is seen through the lens of this friendship, the film’s inciting incident revolves around what it calls “the bad thing.” I hesitate to label it more than that now, as I fear it would spoil how smart Victor is as a filmmaker.
Keeping the inciting incident out of press material and interviews in our current “trigger warning” culture is something Victor thought about a lot. “I think about this all the time because, of course, I want people to feel safe coming in and come in at the right time and have the information they need. And also, there was so much thought put into how you meet this character and how much you get to experience with her before you find out what happened to her so you don’t have any societal bias to this person that is weirdly engraved in all of us about what that means to be a survivor of…” they hesitate before smiling. “Trauma.”
Figuring out how to market Sorry, Baby was an “interesting challenge” for both Victor and A24. “For the Sundance Film Festival, we were really deliberate about not talking about it. Our logline was incredibly vague to the point of making no sense. It was a real joy to get to experience an audience watching the film without any information,” they say.
“The thing I’ve come to that feels the best is that film uses really particular language to talk about ‘the bad thing’. The only people who use harsh words are the institutions. So I always find it really respectful and exciting when someone talking about the film decides to mirror that. There’s been a real harshness used in some of the reviews that I don’t think lines up with the tone of Sorry, Baby or the way the film is trying to embrace an audience member who isn’t prepared to see something very violent. The whole point of the film was to move past violence and really focus on the time afterwards and the healing time. I want the film to feel like it lives in the healing time, not the violence. It’s a good question, I think about it every day, especially as more information comes out. It’s interesting. I don’t know if we will ever have a solution.”
Though Victor knew they always wanted to star in their screenplay, it didn’t dawn on them that they should be the one to direct it. “I’m really happy I directed it. I didn’t realize how strongly I felt about how everything should look and feel.”
What makes this film so spectacular and powerful is how the story is told. Victor builds to this reveal by breaking the narrative into non-linear chapters. Leading up to “the bad thing,” we follow Agnes into the house of her mentor, where we stay for an uncomfortably long time. We see people walk by and hear cars in the background until suddenly day becomes night, and Agnes comes rushing out of the house, struggling to get her shoes on. It’s a moment of dread and tension, cleverly directed with tact.
“That scene is building to Agnes telling Lydie what happened and Lydie holding her while she is saying it. That is the peak of the experience. That is what we are building towards. The violence itself is moving us towards a friend being a good friend. It’s not that the violence is this midpoint. The midpoint is the emotional moment. And I wanted the film to believe in the idea that someone could tell you what happened and that’s the truth and you don’t have to see it with your own eyes because we never do.”
Sorry, Baby doesn’t hold on to that tense moment. Much of the film is filled with levity and moments of grace. One such moment is when Alice finds support and wisdom from a sandwich shop owner played by the great character actor John Carroll Lynch. It’s an interesting casting choice, considering the man is best known for his work in Zodiac and American Horror Story. “That’s what I liked,” Victor says. “ I liked that it was like ‘Oh, now the Zodiac’s at the car door.’ It’s fabulous.”
Carroll’s character provides fresh eyes to Eva’s situation and juxtaposes her mentor in every way. “Sometimes a stranger can see your situation more clearly than anyone else. When he says ‘Three years [since ‘the bad thing’]. That’s a long time but not much time.’ Literally. That’s what I’ve been trying to say for an hour of this movie, and he can just say it. There’s a real clarity there.”
Victor recognizes that that scene reflected Lynch’s own involvement with the production. “[Lynch] coming into the film to shoot was kind of mirroring that scene. He’s this legend, and he was so confident. It was really nice to sit outside with him. I think it brought the burst of energy it does in the film to the set. Everyone was acting different because they were like ‘John Carroll Lynch is here.’”
Lynch playing the part wasn’t something that crossed Victor’s mind when writing the role. “I didn’t really know what the shape of this character was supposed to be. I was just trying to write it in a way where I was like, ‘Well, if I acted it, I would want to say these words.” What came out onscreen was a calming father figure that didn’t need to be explained away narratively.
“When we found him, I thought he wouldn’t say yes. When he did, we had a phone call, and I don’t know if I have ever been more intimidated for a phone call because his voice is so deep and he’s so particular about the words he chooses. I think it was very affirming to have someone like him who I only know from just the most epic movies we have, saying he was really interested in the topic of this film. I was like, ‘Okay, so everyone is amazing. Masculinity can be so beautiful when it engages with pain and really looks at it.’ So it was very, very cool to have him do this role.”
The biggest star coming out of Sorry, Baby, however, is Agnes’ cat, Olga, whom she adopts while on her healing journey. When I bring up the subject to Victor, they light up. “Cats are insane. They’re everything. It’s because you don’t talk to them, but they know exactly how you are feeling, and you know how they are feeling, and there’s a telepathy that over time you build with a cat. They’re very human-like. They have very human-like needs and moods, and changes. I’ve had my cat for eight years, and if he moves his paws in a certain way, I’m like, ‘he wants seven pieces of treats and then he wants the bed to be heated.’ It’s just such an honor to be a witness to their lives. It makes me sad too because I think about my cat, and I’m like, ‘You only know me.” Which is beautiful, but also like ‘I know a lot of people, but you only know me, but I love you the most.’ Cats are amazing, and apparently, their purring is at a frequency that heals trauma.”
Consciously or unconsciously, the healing power of cats was something embedded into Sorry, Baby’s script. As you watch Agnes’ story unfold, you see her start to improve after she adopts Olga. “I saw this tweet once, and it was about how people who don’t like cats don’t understand consent. Cats are all about consent,t and they don’t let you touch them if they don’t want you to, and people who don’t like that are insane. Which is so true.”
Like Victor’s relationship with Naomi Ackie or John Carroll Lynch’s presence on set, the sentiment surrounding the tweet reflects the ethos of Sorry, Baby. The cat has become the film’s official unofficial mascot, so much so that Victor and A24’s marketing team chose a still of Victor holding up the cat as the film’s poster.
“Everyone is so worried that the cat dies. Like y’all. I would never do that to us. You have to believe me. The cat survives.”
