Midori Francis and Natalie Erika James of ‘Saccharine’ dissect the fear of mortality

At times, it’s a punishing watch, but James holds such love for Hana, even when the character’s self-hatred is at its highest peak.

“I think ultimately there has to be a foundation (of love) within (and for) yourself because you can't build that foundation on someone else,” James shares. 

JoySauce recently spoke with James and Francis about their approach to the on-screen depiction of food, crafting the film’s humor in a way that didn’t detract from the seriousness of the story, and how the film’s unique arrival coincides with the rise of Ozempic and various weight loss drugs.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Zacary Lee: Midori, this is such a rich part for an actor, because while it trafficks in heavy themes, there are also these unexpected moments of humor. I think about the jumping jack sequence and also the Slurpee bit.
Midori Francis: A lot of my performance cannot be extracted from Nat's direction and guidance. Re: the jumping jack scene, I remember going into the filming of that thinking, “Okay, tonally we have to make sure that this is still rooted in this kind of reality.” If we dial in the wrong direction and the film becomes a broad comedy, it does not work. Nat was good at just steering me to make sure that we were always in reality and that we were never trying to be funny.

Natalie Erika James: I think, though, that you are incredibly tonally adept and versatile as well. That's one of your many strengths as an actor. You can shift across different tones very effortlessly. What Midori was saying, while we weren’t playing the scene for laughs, is that there is humor that comes out of a character who just commits to a really bad plan. I think just inherent in the concept of eating human ash to lose weight, there's an absurdity, and that goes really well with absurdity. Horror is often about reality breaking in a way that is often absurd. In filming, sometimes we do a take that’s the most out there and dial back from there.

MF: I know that the jumping jack scene plays with laughter, and as an actor, that was a scary state of mind. Hana, at that point in the movie, is thinking, “Have I lost my mind?” So while what’s happening to her was not funny, any of the comedy that came off of that was the absurdity of the circumstance.

ZL: On the note of absurdity, I know you guys did one take where you actually ate the food. Can you both talk about the importance of doing a take like that, or knowing that was going to happen, and how it influenced filming in any way?
MF: Eating for the film was not a secondary or tertiary thing, so to not engage with it in a real way would be cutting short what we're trying to achieve.

NEJ: We treated the eating scenes as though they were stunts. Particularly for those bingeing scenes, we tried to have alternatives to what we’re seeing on screen versus what she was eating, which was more low-calorie. It was a way to make it a little less intense for Midori because it’s a real physical act.

ZL: It’s fascinating, though, that not everything can be controlled. In the slushie scene, I read that you got a brain freeze, Midori.
MF: Not just a brain freeze. How else in life would I ever be given—let’s call it an opportunity—to discover that there's such a thing as a stomach brain freeze. After I drank the slushie, I remember thinking, “Okay, that wasn’t so bad.” Then I sat down in my chair and then, well, imagine a brain freeze in your head, but it’s in your stomach. I didn’t know what hit me.  I've had nausea before, but I’ve never had a brain freeze in this area. It was very unusual.

NEJ: That was also one take. The length of the shot is as it is. Once she finished, the crew burst into applause.

ZL: Natalie, Relic came out at a time in the pandemic when people were thinking quite a bit about the mortality of their loved ones, and I know with Saccharine, it's coming out while the Ozempic, Glp-1 drugs are on the rise. What’s it been like to create these very personal stories but then see them take on larger resonance in the culture?
NEJ: Sometimes you luck out with the timing, and sometimes you’re two years ahead of the curve, and then they become cult classics. You can never anticipate it because all you can do is write from what turns you on and what's truthful to you.

Relic and Saccharine are talking about really primal things. Mortality is one of the most fundamental fears that a person can have. There's always going to be an iteration of relevance if you're touching on those primal emotions or fears. As for Saccharine, I think it's really about shame. You can face shame all around, but it just so happens that the cultural conversation has turned towards this kind of thinness as the aspiration and the ideal.

ZL: What’s tragic about Hana’s story is that everything she gets rid of comes back to haunt her later. It makes me think of the lies we tell ourselves, “Oh, if only I looked like this, I would be desirable, so I’ll hurt myself, etc.”
MF: What you’re saying is chilling and true. What she removes takes on the form of this larger-than-life mythological ghost that always seems to be growing at a pace at which she was cutting off her own feelings.

NEJ: It captures the idea that what you resist persists, and so much of Hana’s coping mechanism in this film is that she deals with discomfort within herself through eating. But “eating” can be replaced with anything other than “substance,” so to speak. It can be online shopping, video games, etc. There are so many numbing agents that we have access to to avoid feeling certain things. Ultimately, we're outsourcing our feeling of being okay in the world to all of these different avenues. The tragedy, though, is that those feelings, whether they be shame or guilt, are always going to be there. The psychology of eating disorders is trying to have a sense of control, whether it’s your body, etc. So by the end, when we meet her, she’s completely out of control.

ZL: It is hard to watch. Midori, in press out of Sundance, you spoke about how there were about seven different times Hana underwent a metamorphosis in the film, and that the version of Hana you find most beautiful is her at the beginning, but of course, she doesn’t see herself that way.
MF: Yeah, I definitely had the most compassion for her whenever I was “stage one” Hana. Maybe also because that's Hana, and not me, but I had a lot of love for that woman, and especially knowing where she was headed. I wanted to hold onto her so badly because I knew that as she went through those other stages, she was becoming a person that I would not want to hang out with.

ZL: Everything you’re saying is making me think of the heartbreaking line you deliver with such poise, Midori, where Hana says, “You can’t love someone into getting better.” What’s the significance of that line for you both?
MF: Sometimes, trying to help a person out of their addictions can become its own addiction. You can’t love someone into getting out of what they need to get out of. I mean, there's a whole other movie where just that effort alone brings somebody to an abyss similar to Hana’s. It comes from a good place—it can also come from a place wanting to deal with your own crap, so you're obsessed with trying to fix somebody else.

NEJ: On the flipside, and that's not to underestimate the importance of connection with other people, but I think ultimately there has to be a foundation within yourself because you can't build that foundation on someone else.

ZL: Natalie, Slanted director Amy Wang  spoke to me about Australia Day, and how having that be a part of the fabric of life in Australia was a potential origin for these ideas around her shame of being Asian and not white. I’m curious what role that day held for you and if that also impacted your ideas around the body and belonging.
NEJ: I grew up moving around Asia, mostly so I wasn’t experiencing that day as a kid necessarily, but at the same time, even growing up around China and Japan, and in those international communities, you meet kids who can be so thoughtless.

Being between two cultures, being Japanese and white, the tension there was that I was “not enough” in every way. When I was in Japan with my Japanese family, I wasn't Japanese enough, and then when I was in these white spaces, I wasn't white enough, and people would say heartbreaking, awful sh*t, like assuming my mom was my maid. It's horrendous to experience as a 7-year-old.

It's taken a while to flip that and go, "Oh no, I'm both. I'm not ‘not enough’ of each one."