Zoey Deutch Talks 'Flower,' Feminism, And Her Healthy Obsession With Reese Witherspoon

Max Winkler’s “Flower” is a weird movie. There is blood, a lot of blowjobs, and a rat named Titty Boy. But if you’re anything like me or The Playlist’s own Rodrigo Perez, “Flower” is everything you never knew you wanted. This madcap tale of deception and chaos follows Erica Vandross, a 17-year-old who sexually exploits adult men to earn bail money for her dad. When Erica and her friends set their sights on a charismatic, possibly pedophilic ex-teacher, they think they’ve found their perfect mark — that is, until the shit hits the fan.

The best thing about “Flower” is that it refuses to shy away from a teen girl aesthetic, coughing up stickers and fuzz all along Erica’s poignant character arc. With a Diablo Cody-esque script by Winkler, Alex McAulay (“Eastbound & Down”), and Matt Spicer (“Ingrid Goes West”) and a breakout lead performance by Zoey Deutch, this inimitable film barrels head-on into Erica’s attention-seeking psyche.

Deutch, who has been a fixture in adolescent narratives since she scored the lead in 2014’s “Vampire Academy,” made her mark on the indie world with last year’s “Before I Fall.” The wise-beyond-her-years actor also had roles in “The Disaster Artist” and Richard Linklater’s “Everybody Wants Some!!” Between nuggets of wisdom about the film and her character, Deutch and I bonded over feminism, good production design, and our mutual love of Kathryn Hahn.

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How are you? You must be having a pretty busy week with the movie coming out.

I’m good! When you’re putting out a small movie that you made in 15 and a half days — I’m just genuinely grateful to any journalist who’s willing to help me spread the word!

Let me start with my favorite question: You’re outspoken about your feminist ideals, advocating strongly for Planned Parenthood and speaking out in support of #TimesUp. I was delighted to see all the second- and third-wave feminist texts you read for this project. Can you tell me what that research process was like? What were some of your favorite books, and why did you choose the books you did?

Well, like you said, we did quite a bit of reading — everything from books about female teenage angst and struggle, like “Go Ask Alice,” to “Reviving Ophelia.” I don’t know if you’ve ever read “Reviving Ophelia,” but that book is absolutely incredible. Since we shot this movie I’ve revisited it and reread it again. Although it’s mostly about adolescent girls, I find it to be really amazing and empowering and interesting and revealing about myself now [laughs].

And we were always talking about consent, and how everything that Erica does is always on her terms. She never allows anyone else to have any semblance of control over her, and every choice that she makes is always hers. That way, it keeps any form of intimacy as far away from her as possible. For Erica to show her true self, with all of her vulnerability and fear — it’s like fuckin’ death to her, you know?

What did you use as Erica’s motivation for seducing and extorting adult men? Obviously, she wants to bail her father out of prison, but why do you think she chooses that method to earn the money?

I want to talk about this carefully because it’s very serious. But I researched quite a bit of borderline personality disorder, which I felt strongly Erica suffered from. She’s someone who makes frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. She has a very distorted sense of self, and she has a pattern, which you see in the movie, of intense and very unstable relationships. I thought that was a lot of her motivation. I think she is willing to hurt someone before they have any opportunity of ever coming close to hurting her.

And Max [Winkler] and I went to one of — [laughs] — Max and I went to one of his therapists, and I was half in character, half myself. And this therapist knew I was playing a part in Max’s film, but didn’t know I was playing the part in the sessions we were having, and that was very helpful in informing the character. And, I think, again, Erica really is just looking for some semblance of control. I made the movie at 20, and Erica’s 17, but I remember all those changes that are taking place, and the strange hormones running through your body. And I think that all of her “bad behavior” comes from the fact that she feels very much out of control, which desperately desperately scares her, understandably.

Speaking to what you asked about the men in her life: because her father took off when she was young, Erica has found her identity through her boundaryless relationship with her mother [Laurie, played by Kathryn Hahn], which is more like sisters than a mother-daughter relationship. So with the emergence of Laurie’s new boyfriend, Erica gets this feeling that she could be replaced. And there have of course been other boyfriends in the past, but Erica’s always been able to get ’em out of there. And that’s left Laurie feeling really alone.

Here at The Playlist, we love Kathryn Hahn. What was it like working with her? That family dynamic seemed to come so easily between you two.

Yeah, I mean, she is — rightfully so — beloved by many, because she is a gift to our planet Earth. She is so special, and she is so fun to work with. I didn’t actually have a chance to meet her until about five minutes before we started shooting, and we ended up basically sharing our little room together for the rest of the time we were working. It was only three days, but that short amount of time did not feel small or insignificant. It was extremely significant in my life as an actor. I learned so much from her. I appreciated my time spent with her so much, because she’s just special and fantastic, and I have nothing but praise for that angel.

It really shows, you guys are a joy to watch together.

In my phone, her name is “Kathryn I Love You So Fucking Much Hahn.”

I mean, goals, to have Kathryn’s name as that in my phone.

That’s how you know it’s real!

Let’s talk about the production design in this movie by Tricia Robertson. The set decoration is absolute balls-to-the-wall teen girl craziness, and that’s this movie, in a nutshell, so I feel like the production design is so integral to that.

I’m so glad you brought that up. Tricia was fantastic. I’m sure you’re so used to people who make indies going, like, “This was the smallest movie ever made, we had no money, no time!” But I’m gonna do the same shit. We really had no money, no time, and what she pulled off was exceptional. And she did it with so much grace and so much enthusiasm for the process.

I had a character board with a lot of pictures, from research or from working with different teachers. Tricia came into my little space and saw that I had a picture of this strawberry ice cream cone. And she had no idea what it was — and it’s not important what it was, it was just an important memory that I had created for the character — but when I went into my character’s bedroom, there was a pink strawberry cone piggy bank that she had gotten specifically because she saw that in my dressing room. Her attention to detail and her thoughtfulness were staggering.

I feel like the art department in general really understood what it is to be a 17-year-old girl in 2018. Your costumes were fantastic, too.

Yeah, Michelle Thompson, the costume designer, was really awesome. She was super open and receptive to everybody bringing their own things and, just, again, phenomenal at her job. The flannel that I wear at the beginning of the movie was something I bought at a thrift store in Montana when I was 12. There’s a white tank top I wore that was my mother’s when she was in her twenties and she was a ballet dancer. All the clothes felt very used and close to me, which is always a gift to have.

I love that there are all these fantastic, creative women behind this movie. Can you tell me about a woman you admire in the industry?

I have what is I hope a healthy obsession with Reese Witherspoon. I am so in awe of how she manages to be an incredible producer, an incredible businesswoman, an incredible mother, and an incredible supporter. She is constantly making efforts to empower and raise up other women. She really is a woman that loves other women, and I have the utmost respect for her. I don’t know her, but if there’s someone where I am just completely confused by their absolute perfection, it’s her.

Well, maybe when this comes out she’ll see you projecting that energy out into the universe.

Like I said: healthy obsession.

It seems like you and Erica are both very outgoing, you both speak your mind. Was this an easy role for you to take on, or not? What were the challenges?

I definitely did rely on my own adolescence to inform Erica. One thing I related to was how frustrated she was by the world and the people around her, and how disappointed she was, and how frustrating she was to the people around her. Because I remember feeling frustrated and being frustrating. I would never claim that I was an easy person to deal with during that time in my life. She’s very complicated and frustrating and fragile. And because Max was so adamant about wanting every fiber of my DNA to go into the film, I got to really put things in my own words. I helped design Erica’s room and helped create this backstory, and pieces of me and my sense of humor started becoming embedded in it. I guess I have a difficult time having a bird’s-eye view on that, but my friends that watch it see glimpses of me [in Erica], and my sister sees glimpses of me. And I’m not exactly clear as to where I dip in and where Erica dips in, but that sometimes ends up happening, whether you are aware of it or not.

But one thing that was important — and maybe a little challenging — was that nothing about Erica is spontaneous, but at the same time, she’s not manipulative. There’s that juggling act of making sure that nothing is spontaneous, but it’s not coming from a malicious place. She’s just a little confused. She’s smart as hell, and funny as shit, but she’s a little confused. And I think, as much as I hope a lot of people will come away from “Flower” and find it entertaining, I think it also is about accepting love. Erica finally overcomes her fear of showing her true, vulnerable self to someone, and she lets them love her. To me, the movie is very much about that, and about a regaining of innocence.

“Flower” is now playing in select theatres.