“And when we do see that side of pregnancy onscreen, it’s in a story told by men!” Glazer said to Zavvi. “I mean, Knocked Up, Nine Months with Hugh Grant, Three Men And A Baby... I don’t even remember where the women are in that one, because I’m just too focused on the three men!
“But this wasn’t something I really noticed when we started writing, and I didn’t feel like I had a responsibility to offer a more informed perspective of being pregnant. I just found my experience of being pregnant incredibly funny and needed to tell everybody about it – that's the impulse where all the best comedy projects come from.
“It’s such an absurd experience, and yet we don’t usually see it told by women in a context without trauma, where the woman is choosing to have the baby and has the support of a best friend who is effectively her partner. But I’ll be honest, it was the body comedy, the fluids, the weird horniness that comes with being pregnant that really got the ideas flowing...”
Glazer stars as Eden, a single, 30-something whose best friend Dawn (Michelle Buteau) is a happily married mother-of-two. Eden unexpectedly gets pregnant after a chance romantic encounter with an aspiring actor (Stephan James) who she believes has ghosted her – in reality, he was killed by choking on an almond the night after they met.
To everyone’s surprise, she chooses to keep the baby and commits to single-motherhood. It’s a straightforward, low-concept for a character-driven comedy, which is very purposefully the opposite of Glazer’s previous starring vehicle False Positive, a psychological thriller about their “fear of having children”, which starred Pierce Brosnan as a sinister IVF doctor.
“The day we wrapped that movie, we were filming the scariest shot; I was covered in blood and holding two babies. John Lee, the director, hugged me and said that I needed to make a comedy after this!
“That was an insane, fun experience, but I was excited to make a grounded comedy with a lot of heart after it. I started writing this whilst I was pregnant and my co-writer Josh Rabinowitz’ wife was also pregnant, and we were in this fortunate place where we started the movie bright eyed and bushy tailed, excited to have our babies.”
Glazer labelled it the “most organic writing experience” of their career, with writing beginning in January 2021, and early pre-production kicking off exactly a year later. There was a massive challenge that laid on the horizon, however; finding a co-star who had immediate best-friend chemistry with Glazer, and before Buteau – Glazer's friend of 20 years – was cast, there was no clear template.
“The casting process, where we had all these endless lists of women, honestly reminded me a little of Mitt Romney’s flattening and dehumanising Presidential campaign, where he bragged about his female supporters and referred to “binders full of women”, thinking this was progressive. We had a list of actresses we were emailing, many of whom had been my heroes for decades that I’d love to work with, but it’s never comfortable being in a situation where you must rank and order them based on how suitable they are for a part.
“I needed to take a step back, and not long after I woke up in the middle of the night screaming that it had to be Michelle. We have that natural, authentic friendship that people will want to slip into, and we don’t need to worry about whether she’d be funny – and, from being her friend, I knew that she had untapped dramatic capabilities that could elevate the emotions in any scene.”
Around the same time, Pamela Adlon was hired as director, her feature-film debut after the fifth and final season of Better Things, the Emmy-nominated comedy-drama she directed almost every episode of. She loved the screenplay, but as she told Zavvi, there was one key reason why she jumped at the chance to direct it.
“I pride myself on the fact that I made the reality of having a colonoscopy famous on Better Things, and I feel that people are afraid to depict this stuff – and it’s my impulse to show it!
“I’ve given birth three times, and each time was totally different, but especially with my first daughter, there were things that happened that I had no conception of beforehand. I don’t understand the fear of talking about this, and I hope this movie makes it more normalised – especially because it’s incredibly funny, and incredibly gross to the point that you want to look away.
“If people can see this and laugh, whilst also getting a better insight into what they’re going through, then that’s gold. I wish I knew all this stuff before I became a parent.”
Adlon didn’t realise the movie was groundbreaking in this way until being reminded on the press tour but hopes that it can help people have a conversation about the more “gross” aspects of giving birth, joking that audiences will begin to invest in placenta jewelry and start drinking placenta smoothies after viewing.
“The thing is, bodily fluids will always be gross to human beings in the same way bugs are, it’s all about shifting your sensibility to accommodate that. I don’t want it to ever feel sensational, I need the scene to be emotionally grounded – it's why I can feel comfortable showing the title card right after someone vomits, yet when I’m watching someone else’s movie and see a character throwing up, I don’t want to see it!
“One part of the conversation is that people are reluctant to talk about these things; a big part of me depicting menopause in Better Things was based around the fact nobody wants to talk about menopause. Onscreen, we’ve just diluted the realities of women’s experiences throughout time.
“It’s why I get offended when people say a woman is badass; to me, it’s like using terms such as “free gift” or “ATM machine”. If you knew what women went through, it’d blow your mind – you wouldn’t need to add “bad ass””.
Adlon is currently in talks to direct her first Hollywood studio feature and has recently wrapped recording on the 2025 reboot of King Of The Hill, reprising her Emmy-winning role as Hank and Peggy’s son Bobby. Right now, though, she’s grateful that Babes exists, but is quick to stress there’s something she feels is more important to the story than the taboo-busting depiction of pregnancy.
“I love that there’s a movie people can look to if they’re feeling a difference in their friendships, especially when they see somebody they’re close to hitting milestones before them. This is a movie exploring the idea of friendship as a safe space where you can say the most hot-button things to each other and know that you’ll eventually come back together.”
Babes is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 9th August.
