ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with My Animal director Jacqueline Castel about the horror romance movie. The film is set to release in select theaters on Friday, September 8 and digitally on Friday, September 15.
“Bobbi Salvör Menuez (Euphoria) and Amandla Stenberg (Bodies Bodies Bodies) ignite in this genre-bending supernatural love story,” reads the official synopsis. “Tormented by a hidden family curse, Heather is forced to live a secluded life on the outskirts of a small town. When she falls for the rebellious Jonny, their connection threatens to unravel Heather’s suppressed desires, tempting her to unleash the animal within.”
You have a lot of great experience, but this was your debut feature as a director. So was there anything that surprised you? What were the biggest challenges that came from stepping into this role on such a large film?
Jacqueline Castel: I think there’s a lot. I mean, I think that this year has been such an accelerated year of growth for me as a director. And there are so many different things that you learn and there are so many challenges that you have to just meet head-on and you have to do it quickly and under pressure and make decisions very fast. It’s just been a year of nonstop decision-making, every 30 seconds. But I think some of the bigger challenges were just that it was going to be a hard movie to make, and I knew that, because we were shooting night shoots, we were shooting in very extreme temperatures. Sometimes it was like -30 degrees outside when we were shooting, which is really tough on your team, it’s tough on your actors, it’s tough on your equipment.
So there were a lot of things that were just inherent to it, and also just shooting in a more isolated community, because I wanted a really specific look to the film. All those things contributed to it being pretty hard. We had a two-week Covid shutdown that happened midway through the shoot, and that whole time you’re just like, “Oh, is the film actually going to get made? Is it going to all fall apart?” So it was very intense from our production perspective, that was probably the most challenging moment. Then from there, you have all the things that happen and don’t happen on set, and then you’re kind of dealing with that in the editing and you’re like, “Okay, well how do we steer this? Or how do we shape the movie a little bit differently here? How do we make the best thing possible under the circumstances that we were at?”
So, you know, there’s so many challenges. It’s hard to describe all in a really succinct answer for you, unfortunately, but I think that what was interesting for me was that after going through this experience, I know that even when everything falls apart, I know how to pick it back up again. And I know how to pick up the pieces and how to make something great from that, you know? So I think that’s a big lesson and that’s something that I think has instilled a lot of confidence in me as a director — just knowing that all sorts of unexpected things are going to come your way and all that really matters is how you respond to it.
You mentioned wanting a specific look in My Animal. I love the small town setting. Can you speak to why you went in that direction? I think it gives the film a very distinct feel.
Yeah, thank you! I think that was inherent to the script itself. But I also grew up in a lot of weird places. I’m American, I’m also Canadian, I’m also French, I had family that … we kind of moved all over the place. I grew up in small towns like Topeka, Kansas, and Reno, Nevada. There’s something that I just really know about that kind of town and what it feels like to be raised in a town like that and how difficult that can be when you feel like you don’t fit into that world. Then how that defines you as an individual and how it shapes you. So I see the location itself as a character and I was really specific on my location scouts to find a world that really felt true to what I was trying to capture in this kind of lost-in-time location. I don’t know, I think that’s a really interesting place to jump off from in terms of shaping the world that your character is living in.
One thing that really impressed me about the movie was Bobbi [Salvör Menuez]’s performance. I hadn’t really seen them much, but, they’re just so great as Heather. When did you know that they were right for this role? Because it’s hard to imagine anybody else in it.
That’s so cool to hear. Yeah, I mean, Bobbi was kind of at the center of it from the beginning for me. There was a lot of research, of course that happens on the onset where you’re trying to figure out, “Okay, who is the lead character?” And I was really adamant that we start the casting process with the lead character because everything is built around that character, right? When I was doing research, Bobbi’s name came up and was on my list for a really long time, and I was just like, “You know, there’s just something about this actor … I’m just really connected and I feel like this is the right person for this project.” Then that was my first pick, basically, for the role.
And we went out to Bobbi, and Bobbi loved the project, and it was like an instant yes. So that felt really good. I also just loved the aspects of Bobbi’s own personal story and there’s all these elements of this notion of transformation and what does it mean to transform yourself? What does it mean to have autonomy over your own body? All these kinds of issues I was interested in exploring, and I felt like Bobbi was also exploring that personally in their own relationship to self and in being trans. I thought that was really interesting and evocative in terms of the themes that I was exploring in the film and I wanted that to be built into the film itself.
I really loved how you handled the supernatural element and the looming threat of the full moon throughout My Animal, that it naturally raises the tension. Can you speak about your handling of having that supernatural element, but having it in the background for a large part of the movie?
Yeah. I think it’s so interesting with a character like a werewolf, right? Because they only get activated once a month, so it was such an interesting thing to think about in terms of charting in the story itself. “Okay, where’s the full moon at this point in the story? How is it impacting the character? Is it a dark night out? Is it a bright night out?” It was its own character, as well, in the story, so I always wanted it to feel present without being oppressive about it, you know? But it’s always kind of there because part of my interest in telling the story … I wanted it to be very subjective and very first-person.
So you feel like you’re in Heather’s perspective, and if you’re in Heather’s perspective, you are going to know exactly what cycle of the moon is at all times because it’s life and death for you. So I really wanted the audience to feel that way too — that sense of anxiety of, “What phase are we at? What time is the moon? How is it impacting things? When is the watch going off?” These elements that up that anxiety that you would naturally feel if that was something that happened to you — you would always be on top of that, you know?
I thought Amandla [Stenberg] was also fantastic as Jonny. Can you speak to the relationship between her and Heather and how you approached that? They’re drawn to each other, but it plays out very naturally. It’s not rushed or hyper-romantic.
In terms of Amandla’s involvement, Amandla was, again, my first pick. And when Bobbi and I had our first conversation about the film, the question of course comes out like, “Who are you thinking of for Jonny?” And I mentioned Amandla’s name, and Bobbi was like, “Well, we’re friends.” And I was like, “That’s fantastic,” because they knew each other from the queer scene in New York and L.A. and that was also also part of the reason why I felt that Amandla was a good pick for the role of Jonny. So there was kind of this combined effort of us formally approaching Amandla and then also Bobbi, on the side, reaching out to Amandla to say, “This is a really cool project and you should be part of it,” which was really important to getting the film put together.
What I loved is that they already had a friendship and that there was already sort of a camaraderie there. I knew that they were going to have chemistry. I knew that they were going to know how to be comfortable with each other, especially for the intimate scenes. And I think that brought a lot to the work and is a really special kind of opportunity to be able to work with people in that way, when there’s already relationships involved. So that was really exciting to me.
As far as their relationship, again, I feel like sometimes when you fall in love it’s not something that like necessarily hits you over the head the first time you meet a person or something. It does evolve in that way sometimes, you know? And you slowly start to figure each other out and you slowly start to realize how much desire is actually there. And I think — especially from a perspective to — there’s that element of like, “Is this person interested in me in that way,” you know? So I think that’s part of drawing that out and playing with that and teasing that story as well.