Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub sits with If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’s Mary Bronstein and Rose Byrne at the Sundance Film Festival 2025.

Bronstein talks about filming close-ups, casting Byrne and Conan O’Brien, the original 2.5 hour script and the risk-taking ending.

Byrne teases future projects like The Good Daughter and Platonic Season 2, and recalls sustaining emotional intensity during close-ups.

Often being under-utilized in franchises like Insidious or sharing scenes with ensemble casts like in Bridesmaids, Rose Byrne hasn’t quite had the opportunity to flex her acting muscles as she does in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. This drama truly hones in on Byrne’s performance as she steps into the role of Linda, a mother whose life is crashing down around her. The film follows Linda as she struggles with her child’s mysterious ailment, a torrid relationship with her therapist, a missing person, and her absent husband, all while experiencing the acute effects of burnout. Byrne is also joined by a talented cast, including A$AP Rocky, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Ivy Wolk, and Daniel Zolghadri.
Director Mary Bronstein takes the helm of the movie—her second feature film after Yeast (2008), a mumblecore comedy. She returns and collaborates with A24, landing with the If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’s dark feel, which also seeps into its bizarre, offbeat black humor. It becomes an unflinching look at motherhood as the endless responsibilities that Linda takes on encroach on her mental health, taking a life of its own as she gradually slips into delirium. An anxious energy pervades the entire film as the lack of support or assistance in Linda’s life truly takes a toll.
The comedy-drama premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2025, where Collider’s Steve Weintraub also had the opportunity to sit with Byrne and Bronstein in Collider’s media studio at the Rendezvous Cinema Center. They talk about Bronstein’s debut feature and her eye for talent, which is how she discerned Byrne’s suitability for this harrowing role and O’Brien’s hidden sensitivity that made him succeed as the therapist (without his iconic hair, of course). Byrne also recalls consistently performing at that emotional intensity while being under the microscope of a camera right in her face for close-ups. You can hear about Byrne teasing future projects, including the limited series The Good Daughter and Platonic Season 2, in the video above, or read along via the transcript below.
‘Yeast’ Found Talent in Greta Gerwig and the Safdie Brothers

“It’s amazing how it became a cult classic.”

Image via Frownland

COLLIDER: I really want to say sincere congratulations on your movie. I thought it was so, so well done, and your performance is so fantastic. I want to start with the most important question. You made a film back in ‘08 called Yeast and you had the Safdie Brothers when they were super young.
MARY BRONSTEIN: Like two years old.
And you also had Greta Gerwig when she’d done barely anything. They seem to have landed on their feet and you seem to have an eye for talent. Do you think Rose can have a career?
BRONSTEIN: I think that if she tries really hard, maybe. I think if you make the right choices.
ROSE BYRNE: Thank you, Mary.
BRONSTEIN: I’m not working with her again.
BYRNE: Appreciate you. [Laughs].
I think you do have a little bit of an eye for talent. Just throwing that out.
BYRNE: It is pretty crazy, the Yeast legacy. It’s amazing how it became a cult classic.
BRONSTEIN: Rose is in this movie because she is the most talented person I could think of to do this role, which is a very difficult role. And she was able to do it.
What Is ‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ About?

Image via A24

Actually, I have jumped ahead. Most people watching this interview will have not seen the movie. How have you been describing it to friends and family?
BRONSTEIN: That’s really interesting. Basically, it’s a movie about a woman who cannot get on top of the everyday things in her life because trauma and crises keep stacking up. There are many things that she’s responsible for, and she cannot do any of them at this moment, but nobody is saying, “You know what, take a rest, take a break.” She has to keep going, and there’s a breaking point. That’s where we enter the movie.
I think everyone can relate, not just to what you’re going through in the movie. There’s so much tension in the film, but I think it’s so relatable to so many people.

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‘If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You’ Review: Rose Byrne Gives Her Best Performance Yet in This Unbelievably Tense Tale of Motherhood | Sundance 2025

Mary Bronstein’s drama is an unrelenting, overwhelming drama about how motherhood can be a nightmare.

I love learning about how actors prepare for things, and you are so good in this. But the thing that I’m so impressed with is you are dealing with this heightened sense of trauma the whole movie. I believe it’s a 27-day shoot , and you are in like every frame, and you are dealing with shit all the time. What is it like as an actor to maintain that kind of emotional intensity for that many days of the shoot?
BYRNE: I really didn’t want to mess it up. So I was just like, “I cannot screw this up.” I was so focused. We were lucky. We had an incredible period of rehearsal, which is so rare for a small movie—or a big movie—to even meet the other actors you’re potentially working with or to work with the director. Mary and I had over a month to just sit and work three or four days a week, where we would just talk and talk and talk through every page, every piece of dialogue, everything. And my obsession was, who was Linda before this crisis? Who was the character before that? Who is the Linda that we can refer to? She’s a Linda, she’s a Linda. That was what became my obsession.
Stress reveals people. It reveals how they react to things. It reveals their limitations. She’s reached a burnout point in this role as a caregiver, as a mother, obviously specifically. But to your point, a lot of people have related to the film for other reasons, not just through the lens of being a mother, but through the lens of being a person, and that’s what I think is such an achievement of Mary and her direction.
I have to do a follow-up. What is it like maintaining that emotional intensity and then having to leave set and try to decompress for a few hours before you have to come back the next day and do it all again?
BYRNE: It was a fast shoot. We were all working really quickly. We’d worked so hard before, so we were just jumping off every day creatively, and I was thriving on the material. It was so exciting to have this thing to sink my teeth into. I felt spoiled. I’ve got two small kids, and if I come home, and I’m like, “I’m shattered, and I’m left with nothing,” they don’t give a shit. They’re just like, “Mom, can I show you a thing? Mom?”
BRONSTEIN: It’s your ride home. That’s it. If you’re a working parent, specifically an artist, let’s say specifically mother, for right now, the ride home, that’s it. That’s what you have. Because as soon as you open the door, your child wants their mother. You’re their mother. They don’t care.
BYRNE: And nor should they.
BRONSTEIN: No, they don’t. It’s like you’re coming home from any job.
BYRNE: There’s no time to navel gaze.
Byrne Dissociates When the Camera Is Doing Close-ups

“I want to feel like we are literally behind her eyeballs.”

Image by Photagonist

I definitely want to touch on the aesthetic choices you made in the film, because I found it so interesting that you have a lot of use of closeups. Can you talk about, as a director, why you wanted close-ups to be so prevalent?
BRONSTEIN: Let’s just start by saying that I come to filmmaking through theater. I studied theater very seriously as a young person. I went to theater school, and I have such a love and reverie for performance. I just feel like it’s all here. [Gestures to face] It’s all here. Not every actor can do that. But it’s something that you can do with film that you cannot do in theater because theater is big; it’s playing to the back of the room. Film, we can get right in here. And I would tell Chris[topher] Messina, my DP, “I want to feel like we are literally behind her eyeballs.” This is her world. This is how she is experiencing the world. It may be the things that she’s experiencing, another person is not experiencing the same way. Maybe a sound is only something she can hear, but who knows? And that is sort of the work that I’m asking the audience to do with me to go through the experience of the film.
Where did you place the camera and what lens were you using? Sometimes, with actors, with a shot that you’re pulling off, the camera is right here, and other times the camera is across the room with a certain lens.
BRONSTEIN: Nope. We were working on film, and however close you’re seeing it, that’s where the camera was. Literally, sometimes right here.
Which leads me to my follow-up. What the hell was that like for you when you were trying to deliver, and you know the camera is literally going to catch everything in your eyes, and every little nuance in your face is going to be seen by the audience because it’s such a close-up?
BYRNE: You just have to kind of disassociate a little bit.
BRONSTEIN: You very kindly asked me on the first day, “Does it have to be this close?” And I said, “Yes, it does.” And then she was like, “Okay.” Then she had a minute.
BYRNE: [Laughs] To process.
BRONSTEIN: But literally, you’re also hearing the physical film recording you. The camera is making a sound, and it’s like you can hear yourself being recorded. So the ability to be as raw and free and expressive and heightened and vulnerable as she was able to be, with that machinery in her face, that’s a whole technical level of acting that I can’t even understand.
BYRNE: I became very good friends with our cinematographer.
‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Is the Product of Byrne’s and Bronstein’s Complementary Skills

Image by Photagonist

I’ve interviewed countless actors, and some of them just cannot watch themselves on screen. They have to leave the theater. It’s one thing to do a movie like Bridesmaids, where it’s a wide shot, but this is a different kind of role for you and a different kind of aesthetic. What was it like for you watching the film for the first time, even though you knew the way it had been shot, and seeing what you were giving?
BYRNE: I put it off for a long time, to be honest. I was completely nerve-wracked by it. I don’t love watching myself. I can see it once, and then I’m good, or I won’t even watch it. It depends on a case-by-case basis. I just sat in the chair and didn’t move. I knew she was up to something when she was directing this movie, and so was Chris Messina.
BRONSTEIN: She watched it in a private screening room by herself.
BYRNE: And I sort of fell out afterward and was like, “Wow.” The film itself was so extraordinary beyond just the character and what I brought to it. The film itself just blew me away. I was so honored to be even in it.
BRONSTEIN: As the director, part of my vision always was, I’m creating this world, I’m creating this story, I’m creating how it looks and feels and everything like that. But when somebody goes and sits in the theater, it’s not my movie—it is Rose’s movie. Rose’s face is in almost every frame of the movie. It is her movie. She is sustaining that energy and interest and engagement for almost two hours just on her face. I always said to those around me that it’s not going to be my movie anymore, it’s Rose’s movie. It’s her movie.
BYRNE: Stop it.
BRONSTEIN: It is! She doesn’t take compliments well.
BYRNE: No, I disagree. I think your voice is so clear as a filmmaker.
I was going to say that I think it’s a combination of both of your works.
BRONSTEIN: I am not dismissing my own work. [Laughs]
BYRNE: “Don’t get me wrong!”
You might have written it. You might have made some aesthetic choices.
‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’ Was Originally 2.5 Hours Long

“I was able to shoot every single scene to my satisfaction.”

Image by Photagonist

Actually, I love talking about the editing process because it is where it all comes together. How did the film change in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect going in?
BRONSTEIN: The script, if you do a minute per page, which I don’t believe in, but that’s another conversation, it was going to be a two-and-a-half-hour movie. During the process of when we were prepping and making the schedule, it was like, “We need to drop a couple of scenes. We can’t do this. We need to drop a scene here.” And I was like, “No. I know that every scene won’t make it in the movie. I need to shoot every scene.” That was part of why we prepared so intensely. I was able to shoot every single scene to my satisfaction. But it was because we didn’t have to have the conversations on set that we had already had. We had a shorthand, and I had that with everybody, and it was sort of like, we’re all in this together. Let’s do this.
Then, when I got in the editing room, Luc Johnston was my editor. He has edited Ari Aster’s movies—he’s editing his new one right now. He is such a talent. He got the movie. He understood the movie from the get-go. It was a whole other process of me and him in a dark room every day for months rediscovering, for me, what the movie is. It’s not the script anymore. It’s not the experience on set. Now we’re putting it together, and there were some things that I was sure would never get cut from the movie that I was like, “Yeah, we don’t need that.” And it goes. But for me personally, the way that my mind works is that those things have to exist for me to decide if I can get rid of them.
To be honest, you want to make sure you have it. God forbid you need it. But it also comes down to how many days you have on set and do you have the money to film these things, or do you have to make those tough choices of, “Now it’s a 20-day shoot, and we were originally at 23.”
BRONSTEIN: I was lucky. It was a very demanding schedule. It was very demanding. But I was so lucky; I was surrounded by the best crew of people. It felt like we were all in this together. Like, “Let’s do it. We’re going to do this.” There was that energy, and that enabled it to happen.
BYRNE: It was a very young crew.
BRONSTEIN: Very young, energetic.
BYRNE: Robust.
Conan O’Brien Stepped Out of Every Comfort Zone for This

“He performed some parts of the script that I wrote that I thought were un-performable.”

Image via TBS

I’m a big fan of Conan O’Brien. It was great seeing him at the Q&A yesterday. So what was it that you saw in Conan that you’re like, “He can be a therapist, and he can do this?”
BRONSTEIN: First off, I’ve been in and out of therapy for most of my life. I’ve had good therapists, I’ve had bad therapists. I’ve had everything. A part of this movie is very much about helpers not helping. Conan, I’ve been a big fan of his since his show first aired in like ’93. I was a teenager. It hit me so hard, and I’ve been a super fan of his. He’s like one of those sort of untouchable showbiz people to me, because I work on such a small level—until now! [Laughs] It would be like approaching Tom Cruise and being like, “Hey, I have this idea.”
I was listening to his podcast one night, and he was interviewing David Letterman, both two idols of mine as far as their intellect and their comedy ability. I was listening to it, and both their voices calmed me so much. I was like, “Well, it’s because I’ve been listening to these two men, their voices, giving me enjoyment for the better part of my life.” And I thought, “Wow, if Conan gave me advice, I would take it without question.” In the script though, Linda does not take the therapist’s advice ever. There’s a discussion to be had about whether he’s even giving the right advice. We don’t know. But I thought that would be so interesting.
It was a banana’s idea, and I took the risk, and he got the script. He responded to it very deeply, and his whole thing was like, “I’ve never done this before, but that’s why I want to do it. I’ll try it, and you can fire me if I’m bad,” basically. There’s a sensitivity to Conan O’Brien as a human being that I think comes across more in the podcast than he was able to in the shows that is very sensitive, very smart, very empathic, and I knew he could do it. I knew he could do it. He performed some parts of the script that I wrote that I thought were un-performable, and he did it. He’s amazing.

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I want to do a follow-up on Conan, if you don’t mind. He has very famous hair, and I’m just curious about how you decided on his hair in the movie?
BRONSTEIN: I said, “You’re not going to have that hair, buddy.” And he’s like, “Well, what do you mean?” He said, “I always have this as my hair. It’s always my hair.” And I said, “Well, this is not you. So what’s the opposite?” And the opposite is parted and slicked. It takes away that sort of “I’m Conan O’Brien” sign. And the other thing was the glasses. To add the glasses was his idea. And the wardrobe is very buttoned up. He’s a very combing-his-hair kind of guy—completely opposite from the human being of Conan O’Brien. But I felt it had to be that for him to be able to be a different guy.
I 100% think that you made the right decision. Because if he had his hair, all you would see is Conan.
BRONSTEIN: And I didn’t want that. His look is so famously a part of him that part of also surrendering to the role and surrendering to making the choices was taking that away from him. But he was totally willing.
​​​​​​​
[Rose], you play stoned and drunk in the movie.
BRONSTEIN: Impeccably.
It’s flawless. And I’m just curious, what is it like the days before you’re going to step on set playing that kind of performance, making it feel real and not like you’re in a movie?
BRONSTEIN: So hard to do. It’s so hard to do.
BYRNE: I think it’s really hard. It’s great to always look at real footage of people. That’s what’s fabulous about the internet, isn’t it? There are always behavioral giveaways and tics that people have if they’re stoned or they’re drunk. There was a chart we had with my brilliant makeup artist, Sarit Klein, where we charted Linda’s decline physically on the face of she was stoned here or she had two hours’ sleep here. It’s constant, this thing, and we had to keep track of it. Like, where are we? How much are we sleeping? We’re not shooting in order. So, I relied very heavily on that, just technically, to remember where we were and Sarit and I and Mary really creating the look. It can easily slip into something not believable, the look of someone who’s not sleeping and drinking and smoking pot. So that was something we were all constantly reassessing and checking in on.
BRONSTEIN: When we talked about how the performance would be, a very key [thing] for me that I think she pulls out flawlessly is that thing where a certain type of person is “fall-down drunk,” except they believe that nobody else notices, and they’re sort of acting hyper normal when it’s super not normal.
BYRNE: And what type of drunk you are—does it bring out the worst in you, the best in you, the boring in you? Because it brings out different things in different people.
I’ve never noticed that. Never.
BRONSTEIN: Everyone’s a pleasant drunk. [Laughs]
Maybe I’m completely wrong, but I do think what you’re drinking can determine the mood you are when you’re drunk.
BRONSTEIN: 100%. Linda is white wine. She sticks to it. It works. It’s her buddy. [Laughs] And that’s a very particular type of alcohol habit, and it’s a very particular type of drunk. I wouldn’t know. Neither of us would know anything about it.
‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’s Ending Is Risk-Taking

“People could have died.”

Image by Photagonist

So you have the shooting schedule in front of you. For both of you, what day did you have circled in terms of, “I can’t wait to film this,” and what day did you have circled in terms of, “How the F are we going to film this?”
BYRNE: Well, I don’t want to give anything away, but the ending sequence was quite a risk-taking adventure in many ways that we weren’t quite sure about.
BRONSTEIN: I’m only laughing because I have the same answer.
I want to talk about specifically the ending, and I’m not allowed because no one has seen it.
BRONSTEIN: I don’t want to give it away, but it’s very physical. Let’s just say this: people could have died.
BYRNE: Now you’re really gonna get in trouble.
I was watching yesterday and was like, how are you filming this?
BRONSTEIN: Not really. We were very safe and everything was like that. It was that type of thing.
BYRNE: We were all talking about it, and there was a lot of anticipation.
BRONSTEIN: I was at the mercy of nature and nature delivered to me that night.
When the movie comes out, and we can talk about specifics, I would love to talk about this. I have so many things I want to say.
Byrne Teases ‘The Good Daughter’ and ‘Platonic’ Season 2 with Seth Rogen

You are doing a lot of other stuff. What’s coming up for you this year in terms of what you’re filming? What’s getting ready?
BRYNE: I’m doing a limited series in May and June with Meghann Fahy and Brendan Gleeson, which I’m very excited about. My friend Bruna Papandrea is producing it.
Is it The Good Daughter?
BYRNE: The Good Daughter is based on Karin Slaughter’s novel, and it has an amazing director, Steph Green. She’s an incredible writer, a New York Times bestseller, and she’s also written all the episodes of the show. So we’re starting casting for the rest of that, and we start up in May. So that’s what I’ve got coming up so far.
I don’t think people understand how much better it is for everyone when all the scripts are ready, and you can block shoot. It’s just such a better shoot for everyone. It’s amazing more shows don’t do it.
BRYNE: I know, and I just finished Season 2 of Platonic with Seth [Rogen] again, so that was lovely to work with him again. It just made me think of the scripts because that’s such a different process with comedy, and it’s always evolving, and it’s a very fluid way that we work on those shows. So, it’s great to be able to mix it up.
Also, Seth likes to improvise, and I’ve never seen him do that.
BYRNE: No! Really? [Laughs]
He’s such a different performer in terms of finding things in the moment.
BYRNE: You gotta say it on your feet. He always keeps it fresh. He’s awesome.
Special thanks to our 2025 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Rendezvous Capital and supporting partners Sommsation, The Wine Company, Hendrick’s Gin, neaū water, and Roxstar Entertainment.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

Release Date

January 24, 2025

Runtime

113 Minutes

Director

Mary Bronstein

Writers

Mary Bronstein

Producers

Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie, Ryan Zacarias, Sara Murphy