After 6 Academy-Award nominations and no wins, Amy Adams is gritting her teeth to earn the gold in the upcoming Marielle Heller adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s magical realism novel, “Nightbitch.” The book and film tell the story of a stay-at-home mother whose domesticity turns ferocious as she slowly starts mutating into a dog. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Adams spoke on the transformation she undertook for the role and her reaction to reading the source material.
“It was so unique and otherworldly, and like nothing I’d ever read before,” Adams said of Yoder’s novel, which she tore through before it was even published. To option the rights to the book, Adams’ production company partnered with Annapurna Pictures, who she’d worked with on “The Master,” “Her,” “American Hustle,” and “Vice.”
“The thing I really attached to is this idea of loss of identity,” Adams said, continuing to speak on the novel’s narrative. She later related it to her process of taking on the character, “It felt so organic, because there’s many a day where I look at myself and I’m like, ‘Well, that’s new. What’s that?’ It just sort of became an extension of the way our bodies evolve as we go through different metamorphoses, be it childbirth or aging.”
At the same time, this specific metamorphosis required Adams to don extra dog-like nipples and unleash her violent side on others, including a cat. Acknowledging the difficulty of presenting this story on screen, Yoder said to Vanity Fair, “One of the real challenges of ‘Nightbitch’ is, what is the tone going to be? Is it going to be funny? Is it going to be dark? Is it going to be horror? This is a character who’s in emotional turmoil, but this is also an absurd situation.”
Nevertheless, Adams admitted she felt natural in this new skin and perhaps even a little bit freed from the boundaries of social norms. Discussing her process, she said, “I wasn’t judging anything as it was going on. I wasn’t judging my physical appearance. I was just in the character so much. So, yeah, I suppose that can feel liberating at times, but also terrifying.”
