Bringing on the Whimsy: A Conversation with ‘Poor Things’ Screenwriter Tony McNamara

To describe Poor Things is to divulge major spoilers, of which this article has many. Still reading? You’ve been warned.

A late 19^th-century British woman (Emma Stone) jumps off a bridge to escape her presumably abusive marriage. A scar-faced mad scientist named Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) rescues her not-quite-yet-dead body from the river, extracts her in-utero fetus from the womb, and transplants its tiny brain into said woman’s skull—just to see what happens.

Redubbed Bella Baxter, the fully-grown post-operative woman lurches awkwardly like a baby finding its footing and grunts incoherently like a baby navigating speech for the first time. She also spits food, smashes plates, urinates on the floor, and masturbates at the dinner table—uninhibited by the social norms that normally curtail such activity.

Then again, her insatiable libido is precisely what catches the eye of Godwin’s disheveled research assistant, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), who wins Bella’s hand in engagement. But their wedding is postponed when the family’s womanizing attorney, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), offers to take Bella on a tour of Europe for what he assumes will be a no-strings-attached smash-a-thon. Sadly, for him, this turn-of-the-century Rumspringa jumps the rails when Bella handily out-lusts him in the bedroom, then takes employment at a Parisian whorehouse after learning she can actually get paid to do the rumpy-pumpy. Only after she has her, ahem, fill, does she return to London to resume life with Max, using her now-evolved speech to describe her recent exploits.

“I’ve been a whore, you understand? Cocks for money inside me,” Bella matter-of-factly explains--more of a disclosure than a confession.

But their nuptials are interrupted yet again—this time by Bella’s original husband Alfie Blessington (Christopher Abbot), who suddenly surfaces in a bid to reclaim her. He thinks he can control her as before—a miscalculation that earns him a date with the sharp end of Godwin’s scalpel in a way that won’t be spoiled here.

Based on the book by the late Scottish novelist Alasdair Gray and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things was adapted by screenwriter Tony McNamara, who spoke to Script about bringing this unique tale to life.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Andrew Bloomenthal: Let’s start off with a specific language question. In Bella’s nascent form, when she was just learning her speech and could only bark out a few words, she frequently inverted the subject and predicate in her sentences—almost like Yoda from Star Wars.

Tony McNamara: Yes.

Andrew: How much of her dialogue is taken from the novel versus your own brain?

Tony: In the early scenes, I had no real view on what the dialogue had to be, but I knew it had to be period because this was a period piece. But it also had to be contemporary for people to access it emotionally to understand her story, but it also had to be funny and tonally weird because it was a fantasy as well.

Andrew: And how did you know what would land as funny? If it made you chuckle when you wrote it, did that signal what others would find funny?

Tony: For me, it had to be true to her character above all, so I don’t have to try that hard for the comedy because it’s in Bella’s intense engagement with life and her ignorance of what society wants. So, I knew there was situational stuff that would bring the humor. But I was under no illusion that this would be a broad comedy for the multiplexes. It seemed like we were making a Fellini-esque comedy, so I didn’t feel any pressure to broaden the comedy for everyone to like.

Andrew: But there were definitely a lot of laughs, like when Bella describes sexual intercourse as “furious jumping,” which is objectively funny because she’s still toddler-esque in her language, which is so blunt and minimal.

Tony: Yeah, and that’s why she was such a great character to write because she doesn’t know what things are called, but she instinctively reacts to experiences. At the same time, she knew specific scientific language because she was brought up by Godwin. It’s like when Duncan tells her: “You know what empirical means, but you don’t know what a fucking banana is.” There were massive gaps in what she knew, and then it was evolving over time, until the end when she had a fully-formed sophisticated language.

Andrew: I’m also curious how you described the physicality of the action on the page. Specifically: how did you articulate Bella’s lurching baby steps in the opening scenes?

Tony: I think it was mostly described in the wee (urination) scene as a "stuttering walk and whirling in circles." But then Emma and Yorgos worked on her movements to show how they would develop as a progression.

Andrew: Let’s discuss the other main male characters. I appreciated how each one was complex in his own way. Godwin crossed all kinds of ethical medical boundaries but ultimately gave Bella the space to explore the world. Max McCandles is passive and gentle. And Duncan is thin-skinned and petulant. Tell me about not creating all characters equally.

Tony: All three are trying to control her in some way, but they’re all coming from a slightly different place. There’s a father/scientist aspect to Godwin—a man who’s never been loved in his own right. And then with Max, he’s a guy with no confidence who doesn’t know where she stands on anything. And Duncan, like you say, is really a kid. He’s a nineteenth-century kid-ult who’s always had his way, and then he meets someone who changes the rules on him, and he didn’t know how to cope with that. And then there’s Alfie, who’s probably the most malicious character. But I wanted the control aspect to be more than just a sociopathic thing because control can come from people who are decent, but it can manifest in cruel ways, and I wanted them all to have that. Max and Godwin will grow through the movie, where Alfie won’t change until you replace his brain with a goat’s brain. Because I don’t believe in good and bad characters, I just believe in human beings and how fucking dumb and awful and cruel and endearing and wonderful they are. And then it’s about making them into coherent characters. That was the way I was looking at the men.

Andrew: Obviously, Bella’s marriage with Alfie was untenable since she tried to kill herself to get away from that situation. But when she reunites with him at the end of the movie, he engages in some cruel actions, like when he deliberately startles the maid into dropping the soup tureen. Are we correct to extrapolate that Bella was complicit in those cruel games in her former life?

Tony: Yes, and there was a missing scene with the maid where Bella asks her, “What was I like? Was I nice?” and the maid starts laughing. So, the idea is that she wasn’t just a fleeing victim, but they had a relationship that was volatile and fucked up. There was a cruelty that she was part of, because the characters are a bit of everything—good and bad and cruel and delightful.

Poor Things is now playing in select Theaters.