It’s not yet noon in Portland when Natalie Morales repairs to a modest Airbnb and plops on to a couch next to a deep-slumbering lap hound named Taco, a very good dog. Morales is filming a feature about veterans with PTSD that’s only pressing on through the writers’ strike because it’s an independent film. Its small budget and tight schedule has Morales on call six days a week. But intense work schedules are nothing new for the 38-year-old multi-hyphenate dark comedy queen, whose deadpan acting credits run from Parks and Recreation to Santa Clarita Diet to The Morning Show. She also stars opposite Jennifer Lawrence in No Hard Feelings, which opened in theaters last weekend.
Two years ago, after marking her feature directorial debut with Language Lessons (a Zoom dramedy she stars in and wrote with Mark Duplass), Morales was behind the camera again for Plan B – the coming-of-age story about a sheltered high school girl who road trips across South Dakota with her slacker best friend in search of emergency contraception after a regrettable sexual encounter. The film, warmly received by critics, has taken on additional heft in the wake of the supreme court’s overturning Roe v Wade and putting contraceptive care under assault.
“One of the main things in it is the conscience clause, a law that already exists in many states and is growing in others where a pharmacist can deny a prescription to anybody based on their personal beliefs, even if that prescription is legal,” Morales said of the film during a Zoom call earlier this month. “Not only that, but many places are trying to outlaw the Plan B pill – which is not even an abortifacient! I’ve never understood why, if you’re against abortion, you would also be against contraceptives. That has never made sense to me.”
The Guardian spoke to Morales on last year’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, her own coming out journey and the irony in drafting sex-negative legislation to save kids.
How did the Dobbs decision hit you when the draft first leaked last year?
Whiplash. A lot of us didn’t see it coming, even though there were signs along the way.
Five years ago you came out as queer in an essay and stressed the importance of doing so even if it “might not be a big deal”? What did you mean by that?
People who live in big coastal cities feel like being gay is old news, and nobody cares. But we forget about the rest of America and the world. As we see every day in the news, it is still very, very difficult to be queer in any way or place. Today’s the seventh anniversary of Pulse. That wasn’t that long ago, and it was in Florida – which is where I’m from. And let’s say, honestly, even if the current temperature in the current culture everywhere was, like, “It’s great to be gay! Everyone’s gay! No need to come out any more!”, it wasn’t like that for a long time.
Is that also why you made Plan B, to show this issue is nowhere near as settled as people might think?
In general, I believe movies don’t only need to be made for people today. Plan B, I think, resonates with anybody who was a teenager and had an experience where they felt like they needed to hide themselves, especially because they come from a strict or religious background.
But also we had a lot of queer people on our crew. My editor, Nathan Orloff, really connected so much on Lupe’s story. Plan B was a very special film to make not just for queer people or women but for all of us. It was one of those moments when everyone does an amazing job and you kinda look around, lock eyes and are like, “Yep, we know what we’re doing and can’t fuck this up.”
At one point early in the film, we’re introduced to Lupe, the protagonist’s best friend from the traditional Latin household, and she bolts out of the house in a huff, kicks over an angel statuette on her way down the street and doubles back remorsefully to set it right. It’s a small moment, but the religious guilt still resonates for me.
Me too! I made that movie not only for teenagers, but for everyone who ever felt like that.
You filmed Plan B as the pandemic first broke out. What was it like to make a movie about one medical emergency while another was unraveling worldwide?
Our first day of shooting was going to be 13 March 2020. We all found out about this mysterious Covid thing on 5 March. Houses were painted. Hair was bleached. As far as we knew, it was still happening. It wasn’t until the Friday before filming that we got shut down – but even then we were thinking it was going to blow over and we’d come back in three weeks. At some point in May, we were all like, “Are we going to live?”
Ultimately, we brought back production in September. The uncertainty terrified everyone. We wound up losing our lead actress to another job. Like, this movie lives and dies by these two leads, and it was supposed to be Sunny [Kuhoo Verma] and Ling-Ling – a Chinese American teenager. We had already seen everybody in that age group and decided to open up the role to more ethnicities, not thinking we’d have to change the story a bit. Luckily, Victoria Moroles blew us away and had crazy chemistry with Kuhoo on a Zoom test.
We had to cut down our budget a lot because Covid had introduced all these new costs. We had to cut scenes while also incorporating this new character who was not Chinese American, and there was no money to bring in a new writer. So we rewrote it [with Josh Levy and Prathiksha Srinivasan], and I layered some of my personal experiences into the character – which, I think, made the story better and more grounded.
How grounded?
I came from a really religious upbringing, was raised pro-life, went to Catholic school. In fifth or sixth grade, I was shown videos of what I was told were abortions with zero context or actual education about it. So of course that gets into your brain. But once I researched it, talked to others, learned the history, I realized you’ll never be able to ban abortions because they have existed since the beginning of time.
You will only make them less accessible to the people who really need them – not rich people, who will always have access. If you truly believe babies are being killed and want to stop that, the only way is through sex education, contraception and access for everybody.
One of the points I think the film makes is that if a girl wants her Plan B urgently enough, she’s gonna figure out a way to get it. Would the politicians trying to legislate it out of their reach be wise to heed that warning?
Funny, I had the opposite intention. It shouldn’t be that hard. They shouldn’t have to go through all these things – these regular teen experiences that happen all the time. And although they had limited resources, they still had resources. They had a car! There are so many people who don’t have any of that who are in very similar positions. But it is kinda like Superbad – only instead of alcohol, these girls have to go to any lengths to get basic healthcare that should be available to them and would prevent teen pregnancy, extra foster children. There’s so much that making this available would prevent.
Last May, on the anniversary of Plan B’s release, you said you hoped the film “gets less and less relevant over time”. A month later, the Dobbs decision was officially handed down. Talk about opposite intentions – the film feels even more urgent now, no?
The last thing I want to do when making a movie about an important social issue is preach to the choir. I want someone who may have a hard time thinking about teenage girls being sexually active or getting pregnant to watch this and go, “I understand, and they shouldn’t have to go through this.” The way that we shot the parents was also not entirely realistic but also aspirational in that I wanted parents to see this and go, “It could be this way. It is this easy to be this way.” You could still be upset at your kids, not want them to do things, be religious and be supportive.
Nebraska lawmakers are hiding restrictions around contraceptive care restrictions and LGBTQ+ life in abortion bills and selling the package as an effort to safeguard children. What do you make of that strategy?
I think we have to be very wise about these things, because we’ve seen it. History has shown us what happens whenever people are like “this is to protect the kids!” We saw it happen with gay people in the 70s and book banning in Nazi Germany. That’s also why they don’t want to teach you history. They want to do it again.
They jam all this stuff in the same coin purse, and we just have to be very aware of the actual reasons behind it. I think the instinct to protect children is of course right, but other people take advantage of that.
Do you think it was better to learn about this stuff when we were teens and information was scarce or now, when the internet could teach you anything – good and bad?
Yeah, even though you have access to anything on the internet, there may be stuff you don’t want on your search bar. Porn in particular can be very destructive to people’s idea of what sex might be, and that’s often how most kids on the internet are introduced to it. For that and many other reasons, basic sex education should be part of their school curriculum.
Could you see yourself at any point directing a film like the one you co-star in with Jennifer Lawrence now, No Hard Feelings – one that’s all about a 19-year-old girl’s urgent need to lose her V-card before college?
Maybe? It depends on how it’s written. I feel very sad for boys who feel like they have to be a certain way to become a man. A lot of early sexual experiences for them are not great, either.
No Hard Feelings has empathy for that. When I read the script, I was like, “Oh this movie is about someone [Lawrence’s character] learning how not to be an asshole,” and you don’t ever really see women in roles like that.
The backward steps this country has taken on reproductive rights and sexual agency and education are enough to leave those with a stake in winning the fight feeling crestfallen. Is the feeling mutual?
A lot of divisiveness has been sewn into this country and maybe the world in general. And I think the main reason I’m on this planet and source of my drive is to be connective. We are all so much more alike than we know, than we even realize – and yet we separate ourselves into these silos of thought. If I have one mission in my work and life it’s to make each group understand the other and connect us. I don’t want to sow divisiveness any more. I want to do the opposite. I think it is possible. I still have hope.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity
