Beanie Feldstein says she might be “the least cool person in the world” after comparing herself to the character she just played in her new film “How to Build a Girl,” which opens on VOD today.
Feldstein plays a booksmart-ish girl living in England in the mid-90’s who transforms her personality and her image by taking on the persona of a witty, nasty and sexually voracious rock critic and scenester at concerts. But don’t feel down, Beanie! The woman she’s playing, Caitlin Moran, thinks Feldstein is plenty cool.
“The key thing is, I was never as cool as Beanie is in this film,” Moran told TheWrap’s Steve Pond following the film’s premiere at TIFF. “It’s the greatest privilege of my life to see Beanie Feldstein pretending to be me for an hour and a half. It has given me so much joy.”
“That is so not true! I am the least cool person in the world. You are so much cooler than I am,” Feldstein replied.
“How to Build a Girl” is based on Moran’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name about growing up in Wolverhampton and finding her way into the world of music and rock and roll criticism when she was just a teenager. Moran called the film, which is directed by Coky Giedroyc, ” basically a documentary, with a bit more singing in it,” and says that 90 percent of the things that happen in the film were real.
Feldstein said she had never read a character quite like Moran’s and, though she grew up in Los Angeles rather than London, she immediately found herself in that scene.
“As the script continued my jaw was on the floor. I had never read anything that really jumped off the page in that way,” Feldstein said. “It has so much life, so much imagination, so much heart and it’s so generous in the way that it gives people the right to mess up really and go through a phase, change who they are and put it back together again in a different way.”
“How to Build a Girl” also stars Emma Thompson, Chris O’Dowd, Jameela Jamil and Alfie Allen, who plays a larger than life rock star who comes into orbit with Feldstein’s character through her transformation.
Check out TheWrap’s interview with the cast, writer and director “How to Build a Girl” above.