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'The Interview': Kristen Stewart Wants to Show Us a Different Kind of Sex

December 06, 2025 • 48m

Summary

⏱️ 10 min read

Overview

Kristen Stewart discusses her directorial debut 'The Chronology of Water,' exploring themes of female storytelling, artistic independence, and the challenges of navigating Hollywood's male-dominated system. The conversation delves into her evolution from Twilight star to independent filmmaker, her views on vulnerability in performance, and her critique of studio filmmaking.

Adapting The Chronology of Water and Female Storytelling

Stewart explains her decade-long journey to adapt Lydia Yuknovich's memoir, emphasizing that her interest wasn't in the specific traumas depicted but in how the author tells her story. She argues that women's diaristic writing is often dismissed as narcissistic, but making this film was about celebrating a woman's right to claim selfhood. The movie uses specific female experiences, like menstruation, as entry points for broader conversations about womanhood rather than exploiting trauma for dramatic effect.

  • Stewart spent nearly 10 years trying to make the film, facing challenges getting it financed
  • The film focuses on how Lydia tells her story rather than the specific traumatic events
  • Women's personal writing is criticized as selfish when they're simply claiming a sense of self
  • The film uses universal female experiences to invite viewers to examine their own memories
" It's like anytime you start talking about yourself, it becomes kind of this tired, pathetic, messy thing. And I wanted to make something tired, pathetic and messy that felt exuberant and achieved and, you know, encouraging. "
" It's like, oh, sorry, I was being selfish. I wanted a self. "

Masculinity, Performance, and the Male Gaze

Stewart offers a provocative critique of male actors and method acting, arguing that performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore coded as feminine in Hollywood. She suggests that male actors use various techniques—from doing push-ups before scenes to refusing to say lines correctly—to distance themselves from the vulnerability of acting. She contrasts this with female performers who are "designed to give" and questions why method acting is associated almost exclusively with men.

  • Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore considered unmasculine in Hollywood culture
  • Stewart can't think of female actors associated with method acting the way men are
  • Male actors are praised for 'retaining self' while women doing the same would be criticized
  • Pre-performance rituals like doing push-ups make acting seem like a 'magic trick' only certain people can do
" Performance is inherently vulnerable and therefore quite embarrassing and unmasculine. You know what I mean? Like there's no bravado in suggesting that you're a mouthpiece now for someone else's ideas. "
" Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method? "

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