Julia Louis-Dreyfus, ‘You Hurt My Feelings’ Team Break Down Fallout From “Betrayal”

[The following story contains spoilers from You Hurt My Feelings.]

When Julia Louis-Dreyfus heard the concept behind her new movie You Hurt My Feelings, it immediately resonated with her.

The project, from writer-director Nicole Holofcener, with whom Louis-Dreyfus worked on the 2013 film Enough Said, follows Louis-Dreyfus’ author character, Beth, as she’s working on a new novel, which her longtime husband, Don (Tobias Menzies), has been telling her he adores, when she overhears Don say that he actually doesn’t like the book.

“Oh, bam! That is huge,” Louis-Dreyfus recalled thinking. “Because as a creative person, the idea that somebody would lie to you on such a fundamental level about something so personal, that spoke to me. That was more interesting to me than an infidelity, for example.”

The impact of the criticism is heightened by the fact that, as viewers learn, Beth’s father was also particularly harsh toward her, with him being characterized early on as “verbally abusive” before it’s later revealed that he called her “stupid” and “shit for brains,” with Beth muttering the latter as she goes through a draft of her novel after she’s heard Don’s true opinion.

This connection becomes clearer throughout the film, Holofcener says, explaining that the timing of the revelation was what made sense for the character and her story.

“Things can get revealed slowly, I think,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at You Hurt My Feelings’ New York screening last week. “She calls herself ‘shit for brains’ and we later realize that’s what her father used to call her, so I like to unroll stories as they go along.”

A miserable Beth initially ices Don out before revealing she knows what he said.

As Don and Beth hash out what happened, Don tries to insist that he loves her regardless of how he feels about her book, which reflects the larger question raised by the film.

“It starts with the specificity of the book, but then really the conversation is about, ‘Are you your work?’ And, ‘Can I love you if I don’t love your work?’” Louis-Dreyfus said.

Holofcener notes that while Beth and Don don’t talk about his criticism of the book specifically, they may have gone over that off-camera.

“I think it was more about wanting his approval and the fact that he lied to her that became the bigger issue, not what he didn’t like about the book,” Holofcener explained. “Like if he had said, ‘Hey, I’m not getting the book’ in the first draft and here’s why but it’s way too late for that. And he kind of should’ve done that in the beginning.”

And Menzies says the film explores both the relationship between love and support for one’s work as well as “the idea of how honest you can be with the people closest to you.”

“Those moments where he’s going, I love you; I’m sorry if I don’t sometimes love everything you make, it’s a reasonable position to take,” Menzies told THR of his character’s approach. “He’s not a saint. He maybe just doesn’t understand. Like the scene on the street, he goes, I don’t know everything about novels; I didn’t love it, but I wanted to support you, and I wasn’t sure how to navigate it.”

Still, both Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) and brother-in-law Mark (Arian Moayed) instantly recognize the horror of what Don said, with Mark being the one he’s revealing his opinion to and Sarah accompanying Beth as she overhears Don.

“Immediately I have a secret from my sister-in-law that I don’t want to hold onto,” Moayed said of his character’s reaction to the news. “And it’s one of those things where you hold on to it and hope to God it doesn’t bother you or get in the way, but immediately it’s just a big train wreck.”

Watkins notes that her character “has to lie” to Beth as well.

“She heard it. She knows how bad it was,” Watkins told THR. “It was a betrayal. It was really awful, and we know that because my character comes home and says to her husband, ‘It was bad. It was real bad.’”

In contrast to the harsh feedback she received from her father and husband, Beth has been praising her son, Eliot (Owen Teague), and encouraging him as he struggles to finish his own play, something he completes near the end of the film.

As for why Eliot’s finally able to complete his own work, Teague pointed to the “emotional experience” of breaking up with his girlfriend and surviving a robbery and the conversations he had with his parents amid that.

The movie ends with Beth and Don reading Eliot’s completed play but viewers never see their reactions as the film fades to black with the two of them reading.

Menzies admits he’s not sure how they’re responding as “it’s a purposefully enigmatic moment.”

“But I suppose my suspicion is there’s probably some good stuff in there and there may be some stuff that’s not so good, so it’s probably a complete mixture,” he continued. “We shot a few different ways where we were a bit more animated and a bit more reactive, and it was interesting that the scene she used was quite plain. Into that gap, you imagine what they might think. What I guess it’s really saying is these things never end.”

Last week’s screening took place amid the writers strike, putting Holofcener and her cast in “an interesting conundrum,” as the writer-director put it.

“The movie’s been written. It’s premiering,” Holofcener told THR. “I’m very glad that I’m allowed to be doing this. I think people need to go to see the movies that writers and directors make. But I think writers should be paid fairly. And as soon as this promotion’s over, I’m going to be out there picketing. I think their pay should be commensurate with the success of the material.”

Watkins echoed that, praising her writer-director.

“Nicole Holofcener is one of the best, if not the best, filmmakers working right now, and the budget for this movie was not very big, even for her. How does somebody who’s been making films for this long not be completely exalted by the business?” Watkins said. “This movie is the kind of thing — AI’s not going to write this movie. This is nuance; this is subtlety; this is lived experience, and this is Nicole being the best observer of human nature. These are writers; this is their art; this is filmmaking.”