Elizabeth Banks & Phyllis Nagy On Their Timely Abortion Drama ‘Call Jane’ – Berlin
deadline.com“There’s nothing wishy-washing about working with Phyllis Nagy,” Elizabeth Banks tells Deadline of working with the Call Jane director. “She’s very gentle with her direction but she’s also firm with what she expects or wants out of something, which I really appreciate.”This gentle but firm approach seems to be just the kind of manner that was needed when it came to bringing Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi’s Blacklist script about women’s reproductive rights to the big screen.Call Jane, which is screening in competition at the Berlin Film Festival tomorrow night following its launch at Sundance last month, stars Banks, Sigourney Weaver and Kate Mara and is Nagy’s directorial feature debut.
The project is inspired by a network of women called the Janes, who arranged safer illegal abortions in Chicago in the 1960s and 70s.
Nagy, a prolific writer who has earned an Emmy nomination for her screen debut Mrs. Harris and an Oscar-nomination for her adaptation of Carol, crafts what Deadline critic Anna Smith describes as “an upbeat, non-judgemental note while exploring the gender and body politics of the time.”“I grew up in an environment where the right to choose was not an absolute right and where the issue of women’s rights was always pretty dodgy,” Nagy tells Deadline. “So, when I saw this script, what excited me was the opportunity to speak to more than the converted with this in a way that actually was completely serious but also entertaining.”The film, which has already done good business internationally through Protagonist Pictures and has been picked up in the U.S.
by Roadside Attractions, sees Banks star as Joy, a traditional 1960s housewife who unexpectedly falls pregnant. She then finds the Janes, an underground
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