Ryder Fortson filmed it when she was 13, so she was going through some of the same things as her character. Casting an adolescent meant “I was in a race against puberty,” Fremon Craig noted. (Puberty won. There was some CGI, and a scene in which Margaret tries on a bra actually features a boy standing in.)
It was “a vulnerable position to be in,” Ryder Fortson, now 15, said. But acting her way through the awkwardness while also experiencing it “made me accept it a little bit more,” she said. The daughter of two actors and the sibling of another, she moved with her entire family from Los Angeles to the shoot in North Carolina.
“Abby is an old soul, and she’s highly intelligent,” McAdams said. “I mean, she was reading ‘War and Peace’ on set.”
For the adult actors, revisiting adolescence alongside Margaret brought them back to the unease and confusion of that time. “I remember walking across in front of the Episcopal Church” and having someone explain penetrative sex, Bates, who is 74, said. “I just could not picture it; I couldn’t understand the physics involved.”
“I wish I had had better instruction, and better self-esteem that comes with that,” she said.
Every conversation I had with the women included a commiseration on the inadequacies of the feminine products aisle and on how much fear and humiliation there is around female sexuality. “My mother had me at 40,” Bates said. “She was embarrassed because it meant she was having sex at that age.”
“This film resonated on a very, very deep level with me,” she added, “on much larger issues, having to do with censoring oneself and not following the norm. The bottom line is, it’s extraordinary that this little girl is wise enough to think for herself.”
