For her third feature, Eliza Hittman took on the painful, infuriating realities of seeking a legal abortion in the United States. “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” tells the story of Autumn, a teenager who travels from rural Pennsylvania to New York City in order to terminate a pregnancy. Her cousin Skylar, another teen, is virtually the only support system she has. Honest, empathetic, and subtly, unapologetically political, the film tells both a specific and universal tale. Autumn is the protagonist, but her journey is something millions of other women have experienced.

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” won a Special Jury Award for Neorealism at Sundance and the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlinale, and screened at the Athena Film Festival. Hittman previously directed “It Felt Like Love” and “Beach Rats,” as well as episodes of “High Maintenance” and “13 Reasons Why.” She won the Directing Award – Dramatic at Sundance 2017 for “Beach Rats.”

Sidney Flanigan, who is also a musical artist, made her screen debut as Autumn. Talia Ryder, who plays Skylar, is also a newcomer. She previously appeared on “Sesame Street” and in a couple short films. You can catch her next in the “West Side Story” remake, in theaters this December.

Women and Hollywood chatted with Hittman, Flanigan, and Ryder at a live Girls Club event.  A community for women creatives, culture-changers, and storytellers, the Girls Club will be hosting more live events and opportunities such as this in the future. We are offering the first month free for those who are interested and identify as a woman. Please email girlsclubnetwork@gmail.com to receive an invitation and let us know a bit about who you are and what you do.

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” is now available on VOD.

This interview has been edited and condensed. It was transcribed by Sophie Willard.

W&H: Eliza, the first time we met was on Friday, February 28 — you came to our keynote for our Athena Film Festival Writers Alumni Lab, our 10th anniversary. You came in the morning, and you were literally going back on the plane to Berlin [for the Berlin International Film Festival] because they called to say you would maybe get an award. And you got an award. Your film was in two festivals, and you won two awards. So it was a dream come true, right? Talk about that experience in Berlin.

EH: Well, it was the right choice because I was agonizing over whether or not to go back, and I was very happy that I did. It was a very moving night. I sat in the audience for this award show. I got invited back, but I didn’t know what I was going to win. On stage, there was a table that was filled with Bears [the Berlinale award trophies]. And the night went on and there were fewer and fewer Bears, so I started to get very nervous because I realized we were getting a pretty important prize.

W&H: So there were just two bears left when you got called up?

EH: Yeah, after there were 20 bears on the stage. So it was really exciting, and a moment I will cherish forever.

W&H: And it’s a film about something that’s very particular to the U.S., but has been received so well universally. So let’s go back to the momentum — your film went into release on March 13, building off the momentum from Sundance, and Berlin. And then three days later, the Covid-19 restrictions hit. What was that like?

EH: It’s a very challenging moment. Simultaneous to promoting the film, in tandem I work in academia as a professor, so there were two unfolding stories happening at the same time. The first thing that happened in my school was we brought all our abroad students home. So I was aware of all of these big, radical decisions that were being made every day, and people trying to think about what the safest way to proceed is.

We opened in theaters, but it was that moment when New York started to shelter in place, and we were only allowed to admit half of the audience into the theater. So I felt really conflicted about going out to promote a movie at the moment when we were all being advised to stay home.

I went in, the city was empty, Manhattan was pretty empty, the theater was pretty empty, but people who came, hung out. They were all spread out all over the theater. Then a couple of days after that, the Angelika [movie theater] shut down, and the city really closed its doors. Then we pivoted from a theatrical release to a VOD release.

W&H: It’s been on VOD release now for a few weeks. Maybe I’m wrong, but are more people going to see the movie in this way than might have done otherwise?

EH: I wish I could say yes, but actually I don’t have any reporting at the moment.

W&H: Yes, that’s one of the issues, the reporting: who reports what, when?

EH: It feels like there’s all this positivity around the movie but I don’t have a concrete sense of it.

W&H: Are you doing online events for this?

EH: All the time.

W&H: So let’s go back to the beginning of the process for this film. Talk about the genesis of the project.

EH: I started working on the film in 2012, right while I was in the middle of the edit for my first feature, “It Felt Like Love.” I took a break and I read a newspaper, and there was a headline that really jumped out at me about the death of Savita Halappanavar, in Ireland. She was a dentist who was denied a life-saving abortion, and passed away.

Out of grief and sadness, I started reading about the history of abortion in Ireland — because it’s so Catholic, it was deeply criminalized [until it was legalized in a historic referendum in 2018]. I started reading about the journey that women would take from Ireland across the Irish Sea to London — to get an abortion — and home in one day.

For me it felt like a classical hero’s journey but a journey that we never would see on-screen because that journey is so shrouded in shame and secrecy. That little light bulb went on and said, “That’s a movie that hasn’t been made, that deserves to be made.” I saw a really compelling journey, an everyday journey that we just never talk about, that happens all over the world.

W&H: Particularly for young woman and particularly for poor women.

EH: Yeah, and for women really of any age; there are women who have more children than they can manage, and need an abortion. So I wrote initially a treatment for a story set in Ireland, then I thought that nobody would let me make that movie., so I thought about how to transpose the story to the United States. I had two treatments going at once.

Then, for a lot of reasons, I ended up putting it aside. But I had done all this research — I started going to Pennsylvania in 2013, and visited the town where the story began, because I really believe that I need to see something to write about it. I started to go to pregnancy care centers.

W&H: Those are the fake clinics, right?

EH: Right, the fake clinics that prey on young women. I took the bus from Pennsylvania to New York, and imagined if I was a character taking this journey, what would it be like?

Then I put the film aside, and made another movie, a feature called “Beach Rats,” and when I premiered that at Sundance, Trump had just been inaugurated. I started doing all these little meetings with people asking, “What do you want to make next? What’s your next project?” I started intuitively and organically pitching this movie that I had thought about and done all this research on.

W&H: Some of the first money in, if I’m correct, was from BBC Films?

EH: Yes, while I was promoting “Beach Rats,” I met with the BBC in London, and they said, “What are you thinking about next?”

I said, “Oh, I have this project that’s set in Ireland, actually,” and I went back to the Irish version of the treatment. “Or, I have a similar story set in the States.”

The head of BBC Films was like, “Oh, I really like the idea — you should make the U.S. version, but we can still maybe find a way to support you.”

W&H: Is the film going to be held, to be premiered in theaters in the U.K., because they made an investment?

EH: I think that, unfortunately, we can’t hold [the release].

W&H: That makes sense, because people have seen it. Because it’s available. This is part of the conversation that’s going on now — with all these restrictions that have been created by the industry, how do you make them more malleable?

EH: We’ll do some press in the U.K. over the next few weeks, and it will be released on VOD there [on May 13]. I think we’re still going to do a theatrical release in Germany and France.

W&H: Wonderful. I want to talk about the ending — it’s a really quiet movie, and Sidney’s face basically does all the talking. We’re so used to everything being wrapped up in a bow. Here, we know Autumn got her abortion, and then she gets on the bus, and that is the end. Talk about why you ended it in that way.

EH: I knew the ending from the beginning. I always knew that the end of the movie was her on the bus going home, and finally finding this quiet moment to fall asleep.

I’m not interested in creating, or [being] forced to try and create some kind of big, cathartic release around getting the abortion, because this is a moment in her life. I didn’t want to either celebrate it, nor be mournful about it. I just wanted to find an organic feeling — she’s been through so much, and she just wants to sleep.

W&H: You got some really good reviews for this movie. Film critic Manohla Dargis wrote, “A low-key knockout, ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ tells a seldom-told story about abortion. And it does so without cant, speeches, inflamed emotions, and — most powerfully — without apology.” I think that sums it up, and what moved me so much about this film is the agency you give these young women, and women in general. Did you know it was always going to be two young women as the main characters? Did you have to amend any of it in the process of writing?

EH: In some of the earlier treatments, I had Autumn go alone, and it didn’t feel truthful, because as a young person growing up, I’ve taken so many trips to Planned Parenthood with friends, for a million different reasons. For somebody who thinks they’re pregnant, someone who thinks they’ve gotten an STD, for someone who has a yeast infection — the range of things that come up in a young person’s life that bring them to Planned Parenthood.

It felt most truthful that the person that she would feel safest on this journey with was someone who was non-judgmental.

“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”

W&H: Thank you so much, Sidney and Talia, for being here. I think you’ve both become such powerful speakers about choice and abortion, too, so I wanted to add you into this conversation. I’m actually sheltering in place now with a person who runs a national abortion organization, and she is fucking busy, never stopping, and I think working as hard as she did before — because in the age of the coronavirus, it’s being used as another excuse to make it even harder for women to get access to abortions. What did this movie do for you all in terms of making you more of an activist on this issue?

EH: I had some concerns about putting the film on VOD, not because I’m against that pathway, but because I was worried not enough people knew about the film, because we hadn’t done regional press. But when I started reading about all the different states that were trying to shut down abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood [sites] throughout the country and deem it “non-essential care,” I felt like the film had an opportunity to reach a vulnerable population who might be stuck at home.

Obviously, I think that reproductive health and care is essential, and I hope that this film speaks to people during this very vulnerable moment.

TR: Yeah, in high school, it was something that we had been learning about over the past couple of years, and it was something that I was passionate about, but reading Eliza’s script and seeing the honesty that she approached the story and the topic of abortion with really compelled me to want to be a part of her story.

Like Eliza was saying, we don’t know how many people are going to be watching it with VOD, but I hope that it can reach a lot more people than maybe would have normally been able to see it.

W&H: Are you talking to some high school kids, Talia? Is this affording you the opportunity to talk to people who are your peers?

TR: Yeah, we did a really cool Q&A last week with some girls who were high school students that worked for Planned Parenthood in Utah, and unfortunately, in Utah they are only allowed to teach abstinence-only. So the girls that worked for Planned Parenthood were doing their best to try and teach about safe sex, and about healthy relationships without breaking the law, which was really unfortunate but it was really cool to see that other teenagers were working hard, too.

EH: It was nice — that screening was underwritten by Mark Duplass, who did a buyout for high school teens to watch the film. So we’re organizing events like that — we’re going to do one in Texas, and other states where politicians are trying to shut down clinics.

W&H: Sidney, what are your thoughts?

SF: They’re obviously taking advantage of the situation to label it as a non-essential procedure, so it makes the film still relevant — it’s always going to be relevant.

W&H: Always going to be relevant, yes. When I was a young person in college, the activism that I did was going to abortion clinics, and putting my body in front of the clinics, and we always thought this was gonna be over, that we weren’t going to have to do this — and still people have to do this. For the two of you, when you read the script what was your initial take on it?

SF: I remember reading it and honestly being surprised to see this story about abortion. I think I was more surprised because I felt like I should have seen this film by now but I hadn’t. I was surprised that I haven’t seen that story told in that way yet, and that it was very true and honest. I wanted to be a part of it.

TR: Like Sidney said, I was shocked that it hadn’t been made before. Reading the script, I felt really impacted by it, and I really liked how Eliza wrote the two characters and their relationship. It wasn’t over-dramatized for the sake of making the story more flashy — it was just really honest, and that’s what I liked the most.

W&H: So you had about two days of rehearsal, if I’m correct, to develop the relationship with you two, to play cousins. In a lot of your scripting, you don’t talk that much to each other, so how were you able to develop this relationship where it seems so real, so quickly?

SF: For me, for the most part, it felt organic. We had these little bonding exercises we did which were helpful and helped speed up the process of getting to know each other on a deeper level. Sometimes you just meet somebody, and you click with them, and luckily for Talia and I, I felt that with her the moment I met her.

W&H: I have a quote from you, Talia: “If I was describing the movie to someone that didn’t know anything about it, I would probably say it’s the first movie I’ve ever seen completely, honestly depicting a true heroic female journey.” Can you elaborate on that?

TR: Yeah, you see a lot of movies where female [characters] complete a hero’s journey but in Eliza’s, which I think is different from anything I’ve ever seen, it felt so real — to me it didn’t feel like I was watching a movie. When I watched it, I felt like I was really with these two girls on their journey — removing myself from it. I hope to see more like it.

W&H: There’s a whole aspect to this about men, boundaries, and women’s bodies. Eliza, in the same interview you said that, “Growing up, so much of that process is learning to navigate unwanted male attention,” and you wanted to represent that in the film. Can you talk about depicting the fact that on a constant basis, women and girls have to navigate space in a way that men don’t?

EH: From the beginning of the writing process, I didn’t want to make a film that explored the dynamic between the young protagonist and the person who got her pregnant. I wanted to establish a tension and a mystery around who that might be. Partially because I knew that there was a darkness to it.

I wanted to instead explore everyday tension. If it’s a classical hero’s journey — like I’ve been talking about, my version of an everyday hero’s journey — there’s usually an antagonist in that dramatic world. In this film, it didn’t feel right to have an antagonist, so I wanted to explore the ways in which the world is structured around a woman that are antagonistic, and learning to navigate them.

So in lieu of having this other archetypal character, I was exploring the ambient sexism that exists around her. The world is subtly and not subtly hostile to women. It begins as a teenager, and in a way growing up is a process of adjusting to it.

W&H: We have some other questions from folks. Beandrea says she loves the film and wants to know, Eliza, did you look at the depiction of abortion in other movies? If so, which ones stood out to you? If not, why was that important to shoot fresh?

EH: I didn’t go back and watch too many movies that dealt with abortion, because sometimes it’s dangerous to watch too much while you’re making something. I tried to do my own research from the real world versus from other movies.

The one movie that was the reference point for the film for me was a Romanian film called “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” and it’s a really masterful film. It explores an illegal abortion in the 1980s.

I was thinking about how interesting it would be to explore the challenges of getting a legal abortion in 2019, and why, whenever we want to make these political narratives that are relevant to today, we tend to mine the past — the real challenge is mining the present day challenges and obstacles.

W&H: You’ve also said that “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” was from a male gaze. It is from a male director, Cristian Mungiu, and it’s very interesting that a lot of these kinds of movies have had male directors, and now women are really starting to assert themselves and their gaze in telling these kinds of female stories.

EH: Yeah, I think it is a phenomenal movie, and I have a lot of questions about the representation of the character who is pregnant, who is depicted as being naive, and careless, and deceitful. So I was just thinking about that movie, specifically, and beyond that, trying to do my own research to tell the story accurately and authentically, but also through my point of view.

W&H: There’s a question here from Pratibha, who would like to know the process of working with the actresses, both from the director’s point of view, and that of the actresses. How did you calibrate the quiet yet powerful beats within the story?

EH: I think casting is about 98 percent of my job as the director — when you find the right people, they understand the tone that you’re trying to calibrate. For me, the essential work that needed to be done was in bonding them. Shooting an independent film is like a rough and tumble experience: once you start, you’re in it, and you’re not rehearsing simultaneously.

So a lot of the work that we did, we did beforehand, and then we were all in this intense experience together, and were working moment to moment. Because Sidney and Talia hadn’t done a film before, a lot of the time I was giving them off-screen direction during a take, and rolling long takes, and then we took my voice out [in post-production]. I worked with them a lot as the camera was rolling because they didn’t have that rehearsal time.

W&H: Do you guys want to comment on those silences?

SF: Yeah, Eliza summed up what I think the situation was. As an artist, and especially an artist approaching a new medium, I was navigating it on the spot a lot, and I feel like a lot of being a performer sometimes working with other people is about developing the relationship, and then having a telepathic-like ability to communicate. Sometimes you can just look at someone and know what they’re feeling, what they want.

W&H: How many days did you shoot for?

EH: Twenty-seven days.

W&H: Can you talk about those bonding exercises?

TR: We were doing a camera test the first day we ever worked on the film, Sidney and I, and Eliza gave us each a journal and wrote three very personal prompts in the journal, and had us write out our answers. Then the next day before we officially started our rehearsal, Sidney and I had an hour or so to go through our answers, and have a conversation about what we wrote. Because the questions were pretty personal, and asked about things that we maybe hadn’t talked about a ton, it gave us a chance to get to know each other really quickly.

EH: I wanted to bond them as people, as young women, and not as characters. What was most important was that they have this shared history as young women on set that nobody else in the crew knew about — that was a priority.

It was a really fast experience. For example, we had Théodore [Pellerin], who plays Jasper, [appear] sporadically throughout the shoot — nothing was shot sequentially. I remember we were getting closer to the moment where we were going to shoot Talia and Theo’s scene together, their kiss, and we didn’t have a chance to rehearse.

Because there’s all this heightened conversation — as there should be — about intimacy and how you shoot intimacy on set, and now there are these intimacy coordinators, I remember I felt really badly going into that day that we didn’t have a proper space to rehearse that scene.

So I told them each, individually, that they could just call “cut” at any time, that they’re in control, and they should never feel disempowered. We worked through it, off to the side of the production, mechanically like you would a dance. Then when we shot, they were in control of the experience.

W&H: Would you want to have an intimacy coordinator now, not in hindsight, but going forward?

EH: I think whatever makes people feel comfortable and empowered, yes.

W&H: We know the film’s title came from the questions asked at the clinic but I’m curious to hear more about why you chose it. It is a lot of words.

EH: It’s a mouthful. What people always say to me is that they don’t remember the title of the film until they’ve seen the film, and then they’ll never forget it.

W&H: Did Focus Features [the film’s studio] want it to be that?

EH: They didn’t chime in on the title. I think that a title reveals itself to you, as a writer, while you’re in the process. I originally had a temporary title, which was just “A,” thinking initially about “The Scarlet Letter,” but it didn’t work. It wasn’t strong enough.

While I was doing research, I met with Planned Parenthood, and I talked a lot with social workers about how they would interact with a minor and with people from out of town, and we went through the intake form and got to the intimate partner violence section. We talked a lot about the questionnaire and why they would ask these questions, and how safety is an important part of what they do.

There was something about the way the social worker took me through that part of the questionnaire that was interesting, and it felt rhythmic, and lyrical, and moving, and provocative to hear it repeated over and over again. The repetition of it really stuck with me.

W&H: Was that the social worker that you cast in the movie?

EH: It was a different one, actually. The one that I cast in the movie was from a privately owned clinic called Choices. This was somebody from Planned Parenthood.

Kelly Chapman, who I cast, did help me ultimately shape this scene, and I talked a lot to her, and her voice worked its way into my head, and in the scene. When we were casting, I ended up wanting to use her.

W&H: And you did a lot of work with Planned Parenthood, in terms of research. You shot in Planned Parenthood clinics, is that correct?

EH: Yes, they were very generous and let us shoot for two days in their facility. It was very humbling to be shooting the content that we were shooting, in their real spaces.

W&H: We have a question about the opening of the film, and writing the family scenes. Can you talk about the opening?

EH: I wanted to start on a performative, high-energy moment and I was thinking a lot about a talent show. Then when I went to the town and it felt so stuck in time, I thought what if we made this talent show, like [it was] in the 1950s. When I was in elementary school and junior high school, there were always these homages to the ’50s, and it was something I suffered through as a teenager.

I was thinking about why we romanticize this period of time and this moment that our politicians are trying to dial the clock back to, wanting to “make America great again,” and that’s why I wanted to have a big scene filled with extras to get a feeling for the town and the type of people in the world.

W&H: Kory says, “I love the ending, but I am wondering if you have an idea of how her mom was going to react when she got back?”

EH: I’m not going to answer that, because you have to use your imagination to fill in the rest of the journey.

W&H: Fair enough. Horton says, “I really liked your choice to wait to truly acknowledge the protagonist’s trauma from abuse until she was in the second New York clinic. The way you approach it is devastating, in a good way. What was your thinking behind how you handled her abuse situation?”

EH: I wanted the audience to feel like the main character was carrying something with her for the entire journey, and that bits and pieces of that trauma and what she’s carrying with her would be revealed but not overtly addressed — because she doesn’t quite have the ability, or language, or safety to reveal more.

A lot of people ask me, “Why doesn’t she say who it was?” I think it’s about the question that a lot of women have at the moment: “Would anyone believe me?” Is there justice around naming somebody who has hurt you?

So I always knew that it was something that she would reveal a little bit about, but not everything — she would never tell the whole story. The story of the film takes place in the active present tense, and it’s about the obstacle she faces, and trying to reclaim her body and her youth.

W&H: Another person says, “I spoke with a male filmmaker at Sundance — someone I perceived to be a sensitive man — who seemed puzzled at the accolades this film was receiving. His perspective was, “It’s too quiet,” and, “There wasn’t much to it,” which, as a woman, seemed confounding — and insulting. It reinforced to me the profoundly different lenses through which we see the world. What has been the range of reaction you’ve had from men who have seen the movie? Do male and female film critics differ in their remarks?”

EH: I think critically, the film has been largely celebrated, and most people get it. It’s nice that you can make a film that is so specific, about something political and about something that seems such a female issue — and it is understood at the moment that it is released into the public. I think that’s rare. I do think that there is a certain audience that would find it not flashy, not chatty enough — it’s too internal for a certain demographic.

W&H: I think that in general female stories are dismissed in a way that male stories are not, and people don’t necessarily want to take them as seriously as they should. Sidney, I know that the acting bug is now deep inside you. You have an agent — what’s next for you?

SF: With everything going on right now, I’ve been self-taping, I’ve been reading scripts, just doing what I can under the circumstances.

W&H: It’s going to be hard to go from Eliza’s movie to something else. And Talia, you have another film that you’ve already finished, correct?

TR: Yeah, I shot “West Side Story” over the summer.

W&H: Just that little movie. Just “West Side Story,” with Steven Spielberg! What was that experience like? You shot that after this movie, right?

TR: Yeah. It was great, I got to work with two of the best directors ever in one year.

W&H: And you’re also reading scripts and auditioning? By Zoom?

TR: Yeah, Zoom and self-tapes like Sidney.

W&H: Eliza, what’s next for you?

EH: I’m also a professor so I’m finishing up an intense semester, and I’m looking forward to having a quiet summer — indoors or outdoors.

W&H: To end, what was the biggest challenge you had to overcome for this film?

EH: The film logistically was really challenging — shooting in Port Authority, which we only had access to between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. was a logistical puzzle nightmare. There were so many locations, and it made me really envious of these filmmakers who make horror movies in one summer house, in the middle of the summer. We were shooting in the winter all over New York, all over Pennsylvania, in endless clinics, endless locations, endless subway stops — it was a lot to do in a short period of time.

SF: The entire experience was a challenge, coming out of my smaller life in Buffalo [and my music career], and jumping into this big, new world, exploring this entirely new medium of performing. With music you have more freedom to do it on your own time, just flow with it — with this there’s a schedule, and long, grueling days, and there’s so much moving around, and so much to do. It was definitely different to what I’m used to in my usual life.

W&H: I wanted to ask you guys, what it was like at Sundance?

SF & TR: [simultaneously] It was incredible!

TR: Yeah, I’d never done anything like that before.

W&H: I think I was there at that first screening. Everybody really liked it, the audience was into it, but also wondering, “Did that just happen?” Because we don’t get to experience these kinds of movies on an ongoing basis. Even in Sundance, seeing a movie like this was really special and unique. So I just wanted to congratulate you all on making a beautiful, beautiful movie.