The Housemaid

The twisty thriller The Housemaid stars Sydney Sweeney as a newly hired live-in housekeeper to Amanda Seyfried’s wealthy housewife. Both women have dark secrets, and their dynamic goes downhill real fast. It’s directed by Paul Feig of Bridesmaids and A Simple Favor, so you know it’s going to be a bizarre, fun ride. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from iXL, a learning platform for helping kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. One subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20% off at ixl.com/NPR.

• 0:20Aisha Harris?

  The twisty psychological thriller The Housemaid was a huge bestseller, so it was only a matter of time before it was turned into a film. And it's quite the movie. Sydney Sweeney plays a newly hired live-in housekeeper to Amanda Seyfried's wealthy housewife. But both women have dark secrets, and their employer-employee dynamic goes downhill real fast. It's directed by Paul Feig, who's made movies like Bridesmaids and A Simple Flavor, so you know it's going to be a bizarre, very fun ride. I'm Ayesha Harris, and today we're talking about The Housemaid on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 1:03Speaker 00

  This message comes from iXL, a learning platform for helping kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. One subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20% off at ixl.com/NPR. This message comes from AT&T. Right now at AT&T, you can get the new iPhone 18 Pro for $0 with eligible trade-in. It has the ultimate pro camera system and a big leap in battery life, so you can turn this deal into a long-lasting connection. Connecting changes everything. Requires trade-in of $230 or more and eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit an AT&T store for details.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  This message comes from Google Workspace with Gemini. Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Google Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins, just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at g o o dot g l e slash Workspace with Gemini.

• 2:16Aisha Harris?

  Joining me today is Jordan Cruciola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Seen on Maximum Fun. Hey, Jordan.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Hello. Thrilled to be here on the Paul Feig beat today.

• 2:27Aisha Harris?

  Yes, welcome, welcome. Also with us is Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi. Hey, Roxana.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  Hello. Thank you for having me.

• 2:35Aisha Harris?

  Yes, I am so excited to talk about this movie. Especially with you two, this is gonna be very fun. So yeah, in The Housemaid, Sidney Sweeney plays Millie, a young woman with a checkered past and who's struggling to make ends meet. She lands what seems like a pretty clutch gig as a live-in housekeeper for wealthy couple Nina and Andrew Winchester, played by Amanda Seyfried and Brendan Sklinar. Now, it doesn't take too long before the dream job becomes a nightmare, though, because Nina is very unpredictable and prone to violent outbursts.

• 3:07Speaker 05

  I have to get up and do a speech in front of everybody, and now I have nothing.

• 3:13Aisha Harris?

  Oh, and to complicate things even further, there's definitely some heat between Millie and Andrew. As Nina's behavior grows more and more erratic, though, things spin out of control, secrets are revealed, and Millie has to fight for her life. Yes, this movie, I love it. It's in theaters now. Roxana, I'm gonna start with you.

• 3:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:34Aisha Harris?

  Give me your first impressions of The Housemaid.

• 3:37Speaker 04

  It started with me being like, what is this even? It is not working for me. And then there is a point, like a third of the way through, where I was like, actually, this is genius filmmaking, and maybe we should make new Oscars for what is happening in The Housemaid. But like, I'm very susceptible to this sort of thing, right? Like, I really liked The Hunting Wives, I liked Sirens. We sort of had this resurgence of sort of like, high camp, high trash TV this year. The Girlfriend, All Her Fault, I'm gonna keep going. I feel very fond of this. Genre, I think, and I really enjoyed this. I feel like sort of like the women's domestic thriller

• 4:22Speaker 04

  got very self-serious and somber for a while, which I understand because the genre is often dealing with like domestic violence and domestic abuse and a lot of the difficulties of having it all. Like, I understand all of that. But I do think that there is like a certain amount of very dark humor in this movie that I found to be very fun. And once it had sort of like won me over, it had like fully won me over.

• 4:56Aisha Harris?

  I love to hear it. Jordan, the housemaid, thoughts?

• 5:00Speaker 03

  As someone who put together an entire, like, capsule podcast dedicated to a simple favor, this is Paul Feig operating in my favorite mode of his, even as good as The Heat and Bridesmaids and Spy are. This is my favorite Paul Feig, like paperback airport novel Paul Feig with like ladies at the center doing harm to each other in inventive and at times homoerotic ways. Watching this movie in a theater was so much fun, coming at the end of a year, right when we're about to get The Testament of Anne Lee.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Amanda Seyfried could be in Oscar contention for both, honestly. Those eyes are telling to such incredibly different stories. You are seeing the dynamic nature of an Oscar caliber actor right before our eyes. And after the year that Sydney Sweeney has had, to close it out with the perfect lane for Sydney Sweeney to exist in.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Feels like getting the kick in at the end of the run at the track meet and closing it down to end up on the podium.

• 6:17Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Somehow Brandon Skelner is what I think I had always thought Scott Eastwood might be.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Yes, they have the same face. It's so unnerving.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, the promise of that kind of, I wasn't sure if what he was doing was working for me in the movie. And then a pivotal point happens and I was like, it's all fallen into place for me. So chemistry, magic, madness.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  I'm all in, five bagger.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  Cinema, Jordan said cinema.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Cinema, yes.

• 6:45Aisha Harris?

  Yes, this is a movie that absolutely benefits from being seen with a bunch of people.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:51Aisha Harris?

  We always talk about the Blackbusters, it's like, oh, you want to see on a big screen because it's visually set, no, sometimes you just want to see a movie where other people are gonna make the same noises that you are when something weird happens.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 7:03Aisha Harris?

  Who are gonna laugh at the same stuff that you do.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, the press screening I went to was like a mixed press and public screening, heavily women. And I just, A, found this movie so much more effective and entertaining and even moving. And the crowd was having such a good time that it is the kind of thing where you're like, we used to have these in the nineties, like, we used to have a lot of these in the nineties.

• 7:28Aisha Harris?

  We did.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  And this is my embraced tradition, return to your roots.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  I'm a cinema traditionalist.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Hundred percent, yes. If you just want to like text a lot of friends you haven't hung out with in a while, the housemate is the way to do it.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:45Aisha Harris?

  Oh my goodness, yes. This was exactly what I wanted and what I needed. I love these types of movies. And I think you both are so right that there's this idea that this kind of movie needs to be a little bit more serious and more grave as it is about what it really means. And I think sometimes we need that escapism and to go back to the era of your Fatal Attractions and those types of things, like, I want that.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Give me a bunny boiler, give me a bunny boiler.

• 8:11Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes. We don't get a bunny boiler, but we do get China, like.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 8:16Aisha Harris?

  Pieces of China.

• 8:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:19Aisha Harris?

  The family heirloom that is very crucial to plot points in this movie. But I do want to talk about the Sydney Sweeney of it all, because I had this sort of same thought going into it, Jordan, of like this being kind of perfect for her. And, I mean, let's just talk about the way this, her career has gone this year. You know, she appeared in a controversial ad campaign for American Eagle earlier this year with a tagline, Sydney Sweeney has great jeans, jeans as in denim, sure. But it caused an uproar because the ads were using wordplay that evoked eugenics, just bluntly speaking. It also surfaced this year that she's a registered Republican voter in Florida. And so you've got that. And then her boxing biopic movie, Christie, which has been clearly her play.

• 9:04Aisha Harris?

  Like if Testament of Ann Lee is Amanda Seyfried's play for Oscar, like Christie is is kind of Sydney Sweeney's. And that did poorly at the box office, some say, because she gave this sort of non-answer about her jeans ad in an interview with GQ. And then also her like her perceived political alignment. So this idea that we're like assigning something to her personal life has maybe affected her box office chances. That's what they're saying. So now she's like addressed the campaign directly. I was gonna forget about this. I don't know about you. I was kind of like, okay, whatever. I'd forgotten about it, but now she has this movie that she's trying to promote. And she did an interview with People Magazine where she said, quote, "I don't support the views. Some people chose to connect to the campaign.

• 9:47Aisha Harris?

  Many have assigned motives and labels to me that just aren't true." And she also added, "I'm against hate and divisiveness." Okay, so after seeing the house, me.

• 9:58Aisha Harris?

  Which is something I find find interesting because people, some people are very focused on her personal life and her supposed political alignments. But then the movies she's in tend to be these types of movies that are very much like, if not flat-out feminist, they are about women sort of overcoming the patri- I even think of like the nun movie that she did.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Immaculate.

• 10:19Aisha Harris?

  Immaculate, yes.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  If all the registered Republicans in Hollywood, of which there are many y'all, want to make independent movies about domestic abuse surviving lesbians who are also boxers, like then I would be happy for them to channel their tax cut money into that kind of forum. But Sydney Sweeney, I think in terms of a of a Hollywood element, of a screen presence, she is so good in this, she is so good in Immaculate, she is so good as Cassie in Euphoria. And she is really good in the movie The Voyeurs.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, The Voyeurs is good.

• 10:53Aisha Harris?

  Oh, I totally forgot about that movie.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Sydney Sweeney is great in also a dime store, a paperback airport movie.

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Exploitation thriller. I would love to see her commit to this lane. I think she's absolutely got a go for it in her that is really suitable for, yes, and the physical packaging that comprises like the totality of Sydney Sweeney fits really well in this space as well. And she knows that too, which is why she takes these roles and plays into the hilt the way that she does. In pure terms of screen presence, I think there was role selection that was a bit out of step for what's in her wheelhouse. So, you know, a movie like Eden, I don't know if that's something where she's like the best fit, but something like this, give me drama, give me screams, give me thrills, give me, give me what the Hunting Wives audience wants, because that is who I am and that is what I want.

• 11:43Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Aisha Harris?

  I mean, Roxana, what say you?

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:48Aisha Harris?

  I mean, I do think there is something to be said that we're talking about this movie and this kind of movie, and we're not really talking about Christie. And I don't think Christie was the right movie for her. I never fully bought into her playing that role. But I can also understand being young and wanting to stretch, attempt to stretch your chops.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, like, her personal or political life or whatever is like a black hole upon which we project many things. My personal feeling about her as an actress is I think that she has a limited range that in this film is perfect for what this film is asking her to do.

• 12:31Aisha Harris?

  Exactly.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  She's playing a young woman who is unhoused, does not have any job opportunities, has a quick temper. And I think all of that comes through really well in the characterization of like this young woman who seems pretty aimless, clearly has sort of a moral core. But honestly, is like, pretty reactive and pretty passive.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  This is not meant to be an insult, I'm so sorry, but she's very good at that sort of like, dead-eyed affect. And that sort of like, very deadpan line delivery. And for this film, which is asking Amanda Seyfried to do huge, over-the-top, like, mood swing acting, having Sydney Sweeney be the blank, quote-unquote, "normal" character. For a long time in this movie, is super effective to get the contrast between the two of them. Which, again, I do want to insist, like, in my eyes, is limited.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  But in this kind of lane, it is perfect.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  And I think it's the most self-aware performance from her that I've seen.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. There's not a problem with being a specific talent.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. To compare her talent to that of like, and Amanda Seyfried. And be like, these two actors should be the same thing, is absolutely not the case. And you look at what Paul Feig did in A Simple Favor, bringing us the best performance of Blake Lively's career. And tapping into something that someone who, in the Simple Favor podcast that we had, Blake Lively, said in her own words, being like, "I'm not Meryl Streep." For me, it's the costumes and all the finishings and the touches that really helped me bring out a specific character. She's aware of the lane that she occupies. In a similar case to like a Blake Lively, Sydney Sweeney is very aware that the physical presence that they have, like, the way they present these stunning white women, I'm not crying for these rich, very well-off white women, who are doing fine. They are aware of the perception of them.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  And you have the choice to either go along completely with the perception in a sort of complicit way. You have the choice to wink, wink, nudge, nudge, play within it, which is a really difficult line to walk, which I think is what Sydney accomplishes in something like this, and something like Boyer's especially. Or you have the choice to buck against it and be like, that's not me. I'm not that girl. Because you do want to defy the box that you are being put in because Hollywood still loves a box. If that is not your journey, if that's not your path to break out of that box that you're being put in and really find that kind of thriving success and a more dynamic sort of career, then you're gonna like have some slings and arrows as you learn the hard way that that's maybe not necessarily the most beneficial choice for your career decisions, your role choices. Listen, it would be cool to be super hot for a couple of days, but I honestly wouldn't want the life.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  Because that's the sort of celebrity that like you don't get a pick when you turn it on and turn it off. I would probably get really frustrated with the way that people were coming at me with the presumptions and access to who I am. And I'd be like, well, I'm gonna show you. And I would probably make some decisions that weren't probably in line with what I was best at in this world, because I was gonna try to prove to other people that I wasn't just this hot body shell. Because that probably sucks. That probably sucks. And so you're like, I'm gonna be a lesbian box with a mullet. And like, I get that. I get that.

• 15:47Aisha Harris?

  I mean, she's still young, right? She's not even thirty yet.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, younger than Timothée, right? Younger than Chalamet. I think we always forget that Chalamet is a little older, like within this realm of new Hollywood. Yeah.

• 16:00Aisha Harris?

  Yes, and younger than Zendaya too. So it's, I agree with everything you've said about this. And I would also throw someone like Dakota Johnson in here, where I'm just like, you are very good at one specific thing. And when you're cast against that, I'm like, hmm, maybe not. But I'm not gonna fault them per se for like trying to do that, because why wouldn't you try to do that? I do wanna talk more about sort of Amanda Seyfried, because I do think that she does have the harder role here, because this is a very big performance.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:35Aisha Harris?

  And she's so good at it. Like, she can,

• 16:38Speaker 03

  She's so good in this movie.

• 16:39Aisha Harris?

  She can really dance that line. And there are so many twists and turns in this movie. And, you know, some of them, as someone who's watched so many of these, even though I haven't read the novel that this is based off of, I kind of saw them coming. But nevertheless, I was still very, very just enraptured with the way this performance plays out and the way that Paul Feig. Really just kind of plays up how silly all of this is. This is the type of movie, I feel like, once you realize this is deliberately silly in many ways. Like, there's so many moments where there's jump scares, where all of a sudden Amanda Seyfried's character is just like standing there like behind the mirror and it's like, oh, and it's like very, it's very.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  Yes, she's just looming, ghostly energy.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, looming, a looming Amanda Seyfried.

• 17:25Aisha Harris?

  There's the creepy groundskeeper, Enzo.

• 17:27Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 17:27Aisha Harris?

  He's played by Michaela Maroney. Their dynamic is very great.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Famously of the Megan Fox/Phenbot movie that came out last year, in which he played, like, you know, just the helpless dad that Phenbot Megan Fox had to come in and help domestically. He's been here before, he knows a housemaid situation.

• 17:42Aisha Harris?

  Yes, he has Elaine too, and he's sticking to it. I love it. What do we think of sort of this dynamic between Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney? And how that kind of plays with expectations, I think, without getting too much into spoilers, because this does get very twisty. But I found it very enjoyable and very satisfying.

• 18:03Speaker 04

  The thing that is very smart about this movie, and it might be this way in the novel too, which I have not read, but what the movie does so well is it takes all these, like, very recognizable, like, trope-y elements of this genre at this point, and like, winks at you the whole time. The groundskeeper that is just sort of like staring through windows and like, maybe spying on these women, like, that's very unclear. The gaggle of like awful neighborhood moms.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Paul loves a gaggle of moms.

• 18:35Aisha Harris?

  Pick a little, talk a little.

• 18:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, and they're just like gossiping the whole time.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I really thought she was pregnant. We were all thinking it. I mean, have you seen her skin? I mean, how about those roots? My God, you think she would take better care of herself for Andrew?

• 18:49Speaker 04

  The fact that the daughter that Sydney Sweeney's character is now sort of expected to babysit doesn't like her at all. No shoes on the furniture.

• 19:00Aisha Harris?

  She's so great. I wrote in my notes, she makes great shady faces. She's played by Indiana L.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, she makes wonderful shady faces. She makes Sydney Sweeney's character make her a bologna sandwich, and then is like, I'm not hungry. Like, all of these things are, if you've even read, like, one of these books, you're completely aware of like, oh, these are all the puzzle pieces. And eventually, they will be rearranged into something really interesting. And I do think that, as we talked about, like, Sweeney being so passive. And Amanda doing so much, it is this great like push-pull conflict contentious energy. So then when the movie flips, you then realize that their dynamic has to flip. And I think that's like where the genius of the contrasting performances is.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  I do want to say there's this moment where Amanda Seyfried's character is in her SUV and she's doing a classic move that we all recognize where she goes from sobbing maniacally to laughing maniacally. And it takes like a certain kind of actor to pull that off. But I remember watching that and being like, could this woman be Joker? Like, could we like, what kind of villainy could we put this woman in? And I thought that was really fun. Let's not forget she played Elizabeth Holmes. Yeah, yeah. She should have won every award for that. So I also think that she is just sort of like, I mean, obviously she is A-list, but I think she's the kind of actress who can

• 20:30Speaker 04

  do so much. And it's interesting that this sort of like B-movie genre film paired with Testament of Ann Lee finally feels like the moment where you're like, oh, like Mean Girls and Veronica Mars star Amanda Seyfried has the range. And I just think that's really fun. Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  An actress she reminds me the most of, I think, is very, very established, just like sort of A-list in the mind, is Julianne Moore, who also, if there's one person who's filmography is balanced between like prestige dazzle you and absolute junk dazzle you, it is Julianne Moore. Her curation is so broad in her career. They meet in the middle, in the movie Chloe. In the bisexual exploitation movie Chloe, there are like the two wolves that are within you. It's like watching a movie like Chloe and watching a movie like, you know, say even Jennifer's Body, where Amanda Seyfried is the straight man character to the more vamped up Megan Fox. Amanda Seyfried has been on the opposite side. She's been the Sydney Sweeney

• 21:36Speaker 03

  in this dynamic, in another like girl-to-hander, sort of pulpy genre movie of this sort of sort. It makes me so happy to watch an actress getting older and having cooler opportunities that are higher profile, that showcase like the quiet choices she's been making to smaller audiences for a long time. That's an arc that just makes my heart soar.

• 21:59Aisha Harris?

  Yeah. Yeah. I feel like anytime I see Amanda Seyfried is going to be in a movie, I'm going to be in good hands. Like, it doesn't really matter what kind of role she's playing. She's just always going to be that good. I, I love this.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  If you bought Big Love stock, y'all, we are cashing in. It is cashing in.

• 22:19Aisha Harris?

  I think that is the perfect way to end this episode. Tell us what you think about The Housemaid. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/PCHH and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/NPRPopCulture. We'll have a link to that in our episode description and go see it in a theater. Okay. And that brings us to the end of our show. Jordan Cruciola, Roxana Hadadi, thanks so much for being here. This was, as always, a delight.

• 22:44Speaker 03

  What a thrill. A perfect thrill.

• 22:46Aisha Harris?

  Yes, thank you. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Kayla Lattimore, Mike Katsev, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. And thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris, and we'll see you all next time.