When Cat Person was first published in The New Yorker in 2017, Susanna Fogel was captivated by Kristen Roupenian’s short story about a young female college student who reluctantly sleeps with an elderly man. The article rapidly went viral, becoming an unavoidable flashpoint for contemporary debates about gender, dating, privilege, and consent.
Fogel (Booksmart, The Spy Who Dumped Me) tells Yahoo Entertainment about her new film adaptation of the essay, “It was widely discussed with my group of friends, and this article was really provocative and divisive, and it made people really angry and really passionate.”
“And so did the movie,” she adds, referring to the film’s divided reception at the Sundance Film Festival in January. “And the film will continue to do so, and I have no problem with that at all.”
Cat Person, adapted by Michelle Ashford for the big screen, stars Emilia Jones (Coda) as Margot, a 20-year-old college sophomore who works behind the concession stand at an arthouse movie theater. After she teasingly ridicules Robert’s (Succession’s Nicholas Braun) snack choices, he asks for her number, and they engage in a lengthy, flirtatious text message relationship that eventually leads to in-person encounters.
However, Margot cannot stop imagining the horrific and barbaric acts of violence that the awkward and somewhat enigmatic Robert could commit against her. This is part of the reason why Cat Person is referred to as a “genre-bending thriller.”
“I believe that women inhabit multiple genres. “There are many genres in our lives,” says Fogel. “We have a subconscious, pervasive fear for our lives because we are constantly aware that we are vulnerable to people who are larger than us, specifically males. So this is always occurring regardless of what else is occurring. There is always a little bit of fight or flight in our minds.”
Margot engages almost out of sympathy for Robert when their relationship becomes physical, resulting in the cringiest kiss scene and cringiest, longest, most grueling sex sequence you’ll see in a film this year.
“We did not practice that kiss,” Fogel confesses. “We discussed the negative aspects, and then we simply did it. It was enjoyable. It is very difficult not to chuckle. It is extremely difficult for the actors not to guffaw into each other’s mouths throughout the entire performance. The moment we would say “Cut,” they would burst out cackling uncontrollably.”
To make the sex scene less awkward for Jones and Braun, Fogel created storyboards of every specific image they would capture, which she describes as resembling a comic strip flip book. “This is the greatest flip book to peruse. When I showed the actors, they were like, ‘This is amazing. We cannot wait to film this!” And then creating it was a lot of joy.”
There are significant alterations made to the plot for the film adaptation. Braun is not described in the short story, which was criticized for fat-shaming, as being overweight. The presence of Margot’s college roommate, as portrayed by Geraldine Viswanathan, is much more palpable. And the film continues well beyond Robert’s concluding, climactic text.
