On Monday, December 3, the Park Ave screening room was packed with people to see the much anticipated Netflix film “Kindergarten Teacher” starring and produced by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Viewers then flocked to the Hotel Plaza Athenee for a tea service and a short Q&A session with award-winning actress and co-producer, Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Once guests settled in with their hot beverage of choice and some finger sandwiches, Gyllenhaal began to discuss what it was like for her to be both lead actress and co-producer. “Once I was a producer for the first time on a film, I realized how much I didn’t know, and how interested I really was and so much of what it actually means to produce a film,” said Gyllenhaal humbly. Although she had taken on some producer tasks in her previous films, this was the first time she was credited as producer on a film.
When asked how she prepared for her character, Gyllenhaal went into detail about the mindset of her character, Kindergarten teacher Lisa Spinelli. “I don’t think she’s mentally ill, I don’t think she’s malevolent. I think she’s broken and I think she’s starving […] because of the culture she lives in and she lives in the same culture that we live in.” Gyllenhaal’s statement about her character hits close to home for a lot of women and makes the audience rethink the actions of Lisa. In many ways, the audience empathizes with Lisa and the way she craves something more out of her daily life.
Being an award-winning actress and accomplished producer, Gyllenhaal is hungry for more and has set her sights on Director. When asked about her future ambitions of directing, her reply circled back to the theme of the movie of societal starvation of a woman’s talents. “My interests [are] in the realm of directorial interests, that’s in the realm of deeper story-telling, and yet I really didn‘t feel entitled to it, and I wonder if it’s in some ways the way a hundred years ago if you were a medical minded person and you were a woman you were like, oh I’ll be a nurse,” she commented on her feelings of transitioning to director. Despite the progression of Feminism, her comparison to history is a reminder of both how far we have come, and still how much farther we have yet to go. Her debut as Director for her adaptation of the Alena Ferrante novel, The Lost Daughter, is greatly anticipated.
