It was fall 2015 and Academy Award–winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno) was supposed to be writing a movie about Barbie for Sony and Amy Schumer. She had just delivered her third child, and thought she would adeptly juggle the demands of her work life and family life, like she had before. This time was different.
“I was supposed to be writing this big-budget, four-quadrant Hollywood movie, and I was failing at it. I could not even get a page written, which has never happened to me. I just hit this wall of exhaustion,” Cody said recently to Vanity Fair. “I knew it was crazy, and I knew that it would end eventually. But for some reason, I just was not myself after having [my son].”
Codys postpartum roller coaster is familiar territory to many women. Despite being able to logically rationalize the drastic changes to ones body and the brutal exhaustion that upends normal life, a moms emotional brain doesnt always follow suit, especially when charged with tending to the needs of older children, too. What helped for Cody, the screenwriter who has frequently mined her own life for her work, was that she turned to storytelling to mend her wounds.
“The only thing that comforted me at this time in my life was writing this weird, intense, almost stream-of-consciousness indie script, which became Tully,” she said. “I used it as a form of therapy—fantasizing about what it might be like if somebody could magically appear and take care of me.”
The result is her third collaboration with director Jason Reitman, and her second with her on-screen avatar, Charlize Theron.Tully is a story about Marlo, who, after having her third child, falls into a pit of despair, overwhelmed by the special needs of her 5-year-old while trying to address the relentless demands of a newborn. She is saved by the winsome night nurse Tully (Mackenzie Davis), who arrives as a gift from her brother to take care of Marlo and restore a sense of self to her haggard soul. Her husband (Ron Livingston) is a sweet, but clueless dolt, necessary for the films surprise twist.
Tully first debuted as a secret screening at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and has been hailed by critics for its revealing look at motherhood—and adulthood.
Said Vanity Fair chief critic Richard Lawson, “The film uses its mom-at-wits-end motif to explore a more broadly relatable anxiety about the ever-mutating shape of life, the slow and imperceptible shifts—caused by both choice and chance—that gradually make and remake our experience of the world. In its most poignant moments, Tully addresses something common among those of us whove found ourselves on the other side of young adulthood. Its the realization that weve woven a narrative for ourselves—consciously or not—whose past is forever irretrievable, that life has happened, that we have changed without noticing, that time has come along and carried us away.”
None of this would be possible without Theron fully embodying the character of Marlo. Gaining some 50 pounds to play the part, Theron connected easily to the main character, appreciating the depths Cody went to convey the irreparable changes that come with motherhood. It didn't hurt that her youngest was six months old and had just moved out of her room, finally offering her a complete night of sleep.
“The one thing thats always bothered me [about motherhood] is you cant just talk honestly about the experience without shame being attached to it,” said Theron, a single mother to a 6-year-old son and a now 2-year-old daughter. “Somehow, talking about how messy and hard it is to raise kids always carries this stigma. Everybody else is telling you its this fucking blessing and its great every single day—and if its not, then you are just not good at it.”
Theron is no stranger to the art of physical transformation. She gained 30 pounds to play serial killer Aileen Wuornos in her Oscar-winning role in Monster; she shaved her head and bulked up to portray Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. And she did her own makeup to play disheveled Mavis in her original pairing with Reitman and Cody, the caustic Young Adult. So it was never a question that she would again transform to accurately portray a postpartum mother. It just came at a really bad time.
“I had just finished Atomic Blonde, and I was so ready to rock a bikini that summer. I was in the best shape of my life,” she said. “And I had that body for about three seconds until Jason called, and I was like, Waaahh. Can we shoot this after the summer?”
Vanity aside, Theron has been very open about how long it took for her to take off the weight, drawing the ire of the Internet for lamenting how much harder it was for the statuesque blonde to drop the pounds at 42 than it was at 27, when she first gained weight for Monster. Still, all the sugar and processed food she ate threw her for a loop psychologically.
“Its a bitch,” she said. “I wasnt quite ready for that. Depression hit me in the face the way postpartum [depression] hits women in the face. I was so dark. I was so lethargic. I didnt want to get out of bed.”
She adds that Reitman would just position her on set where he wanted her, and “I was just [Marlo] . . . But then you wrap and go home, and I have small kids to take care of. Then I was like, Who is this person?”
Tully has already prompted lots of discussion online, with some asking why Marlos 5-year-old sons emotional issues werent given a specific name. Cody said that was intentional, a reaction to her experience raising children in Los Angeles, where its often difficult to get a diagnosis from a school or a psychologist about the behaviors of your unique child.
“I feel like everybody I know has a gifted snowflake for a child, whos so advanced and perfect,” said Cody. “It can really be challenging when you have a teacher telling you that theres something wrong with your kid, or that your kid cant keep up. It can be really isolating and scary.
“I know how pretentious and goofy this sounds, but writing this movie really did save my life,” Cody said. But the results have proven to be much larger than that.
Theron, for one, says it made her feel like she was part of something that was bigger than herself. “I just didnt feel as alone as a parent when I made this movie.”
Others may feel that way, too.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Nicole SperlingNicole Sperling is a Hollywood Correspondent for Vanity Fair.
[contf] [contfnew] 
Vanity Fair
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
