Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with My Fiona’s Kelly Walker

Kelly Walker is an emerging storyteller who made her feature film debut as a writer and director with My Fiona.

Devastated by the unexpected suicide of her best friend Fiona, Jane helps Fiona’s widow care for their son. The relationship develops from a friendship to a deeper affair that’s potentially catastrophic to the healing of all involved.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Kelly about My Fiona.

PC: Tell us about My Fiona and the inspiration behind the film.
Kelly: My Fiona is about a woman named Jane whose best friend passes away from suicide. She’s left not really knowing who she is, but she finds solace in helping out Fiona’s wife, Gemma, and their child, Bailey. Then, Gemma and Jane inadvertently fall into this relationship that is maybe not the best idea.

The inspiration came from when I was twelve and my babysitter passed away from suicide. It was one of those things where you go, “The world is not a safe place. People can make these decisions to exit.” I was inspired by the spiderweb of suicide and how it affects so many people and how grief affects everyone very differently.

Coupled with that, I was trying to figure out my own bisexuality. I’m happily married to a man, but I also identify as bisexual. I was like, “Where does that live in my life now that I’m married?” It was through the character of Jane where I was like, “It just is.” We don’t need labels. We don’t need to be one thing or the other. Love is love. It’s gray shades of bisexuality, gray shades of grief, and the intersection of the two.

PC: In your director’s statement, you said that you never knew that this would one day become a film. Can you tell us about the writing process and how it finally came to fruition?
Kelly: I started writing it in 2016. The film has had so many different versions. There were four that went back to the blank page. This was a brand-new script. It was always the same three characters. There’s only one scene from the film that was in that first draft.

PC: Oh, wow!

Kelly: Yeah. At one point the character Alec was Jane’s fiancé…it was a whole thing. There was another child at one point, a little girl. I kept writing it. I realized with each draft that I was hiding behind something; I wasn’t fully showing up for these characters.

Then, I did Australians in Film. They had a writer’s lab that I got invited into. I was working on the script there. I read one page and my mentor leaned back and said, “So, what’s your film about?” I went back to my page again. He goes, “No, no, no. I heard that.” He was like, “What’s your movie about?” I told him the simplest version. He said, “Go write that.” That’s the script that we ended up making.

PC: As you were writing these characters, did you have these particular actors in mind? What was the casting process like?
Kelly: Alec was always Ryan Garcia, who’s also my husband; it was always his voice. For the role of Jane, I was writing it for myself, which is weird to say now because there’s no other Jane than Jeanette [Maus]. But no, I was writing it for myself.

Then somewhere in 2017, I started getting into directing. That started taking over, and I realized as I was getting producers involved that there’s no way I can do both. I’m not a strong enough director yet to juggle acting and directing. I’m like, “The role of Jane is so emotional, I don’t want to let anyone down by not being able to bring it.” I had to make a decision. I closed my eyes and I thought about talkbacks and stuff at festivals. I was like, “I’ll be really jealous of whoever gets to talk on behalf of the film and gets to express their love of making this film.” So, I was like, “That’s me.”

We had Jeanette at every single table read since 2016. She played every character except Jane. At the end of 2018, I was like, “I want you to play Jane at the table read.” She did. It was a little bit mortifying because I was like, “What was I doing the whole time? Jeanette is Jane. Jane is Jeanette. This was what it was supposed to be the whole time.”

PC: This is your feature film debut as a writer-director. Did anything surprise you about the experience? What was the biggest takeaway for you?
Kelly: You can’t prepare for the amount of pressure from a feature and the amount of questions that you’re fielding every day, all the things that are going wrong, because they just do. I remember day three telling Ryan, I was like, “I think I’m going to die today.” In my head, I wasn’t even joking. I was being a little dramatic. I hadn’t realized that you’re holding up the world.

My biggest takeaway was that I’m not holding up this world alone. I have all these people that are here to support the project. They care about it—that we’ve all come together to do something—and I can share that weight. My producers had a thing they would do with me, which was from across the room, they’d do hands up. That meant to take my hands off everything. When I’d see hands up, I was like, “Yep…I’m going to give you that. You’re going to take that. I’m going to not be so in control here.” That’s not a bad thing.

PC: In addition to the work that you’ve done behind the scenes, you’re also an actress yourself. How beneficial was it having that experience as you prepared to collaborate with the cast?
Kelly: I’d say it was, considering we’re an indie film with a small budget and not a lot of days. My background is acting. Also, my day job forever has been video editing. I have those two brains working at the same time. For the acting, especially with Jeanette’s character, I had empathy for how much work goes into that space. I wanted to be really aware of that. I wanted to make sure we were getting her shots first in the scenes that are more Jane-heavy or the same for Corbin [Reid] who plays Gemma, if it’s a heavy Gemma scene. I wanted her to get her closeups first. With actors, we didn’t rehearse much, but we talked about it.

What I love as an actor is getting to feel like you have some autonomy over your character. I really wanted them to bring their versions of these females to life. When you write it, it’s almost like you hand it over. You go, “She’s yours now.” You mold it together. But at that point, essentially, it’s their story to tell. Maybe that’s coming from the acting place, honoring how exciting that is as an actor to be given that flexibility.

PC: The film does a beautiful job balancing grief with humor. How challenging was it for you as you were writing and directing this to find that balance?
Kelly: That was actually a huge, huge thing for me when writing. I was like, “It has to have levity.” In any scene, I would try to bounce it into a lighter scene. It wasn’t heavy, heavy, heavy. That’s because when I was seventeen, I had a boyfriend that died. He had a heart attack. He was twenty-one. It made no sense. I remember when my mom called me to tell me he had passed. I was living my best Saturday—I had just gotten a frozen yogurt and I got a Lucky magazine. I was about to read my magazine and eat my yogurt, and I got this phone call. It just changed my life. We hung up.

We hang up and I’m like, “Now what?” Looking at this yogurt, I was like, “I have to eat this yogurt. It can’t go to waste.” Looking back, that’s funny now, but at the time, it was a very serious moment of what do I do with the yogurt. If you were to film that moment, it would be the lightness in the darkness. Because I think in any situation when there’s grief, the world doesn’t pause for your grief. The sun’s still coming out. Good news is still happening around your despair. There are still relationships. There are still connections. There’s still hope. That’s the most relatable aspect of grief.

PC: With this being your feature film debut as a director-writer, is there a particular scene that you’re excited for our audiences to see?
Kelly: Good question. I love the fight scene between Gemma and Jane in the bedroom…I know you know what I’m talking about. I love that scene. I even got a little bit like, “What’s going to happen next?” when I watched it. The performances in that scene are mind-blowing. But there are also some scenes that are so beautiful. I’m looking at Laura Jansen, our DP. There are some visuals that I’m super excited about. The wake scene is another one of my favorites.

PC: With the film out now, what do you hope audiences take away after they see it?
Kelly: I hope people find empathy with each other’s experiences with grief and realize grief is not a linear experience. We all love to refer to those seven stages of grief. They’re not seven stages and you complete them and then you move on; it’s like you can go backwards, forwards, and sideways. Years later, you can revert back to the first step of grief and start again. It’s honoring that there’s no such thing as moving on, honoring that there’s no right or wrong, and celebrating the messy aspects of grief.

Also, with sexuality, “Be you dude. Be you. We don’t need a Facebook post if you don’t want to.”

PC: This is such a powerful debut as a writer-director. What’s next for you?
Kelly: I have a couple of different things I’m working on. I have a biopic on Edythe D. Eyde—she wrote the first magazine for lesbians called Vice Versa in 1947. I’m co-writing that with Kim Flack, who was a consulting producer on My Fiona.

I have a book I’ve optioned that I’m really excited about, which has also got elements of grief. I clearly am very respondent to this topic. It’s because we’re all going to go through it at some point, more than once. One of my fears in life is people dying around me. It’s almost like if you work on it and you have some relationship to it outside of that, maybe it makes it easier. Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t. But you know, the idea that I could…

There will be more stories on grief. There will be more stories on sexuality. I look for characters that keep me up at night. When that happens, that’s when I move towards writing.

To keep up with Kelly, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Watch My Fiona wherever you stream movies.

Photo Credit: Dustin Walker