How Ottessa Moshfegh Brought Her Novel, Eileen, to the Screen

The author Ottessa Moshfegh always plumbs the inner worlds of her (typically female) characters, leaving no stone unturned, no matter how extreme the findings. Novels like 2018’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (which had a viral moment on TikTok during the pandemic) and 2020’s Death in Her Hands explore themes of loneliness, isolation, and the complexity of female friendships, told with biting wit and a macabre sense of humor that’s become something of a signature for Moshfegh. It’s an addictively grim sensibility that can be traced back to her very first novel, 2015’s Eileen, the film adaptation of which is now in theaters.

Thomasin McKenzie stars in the titular role as a young woman working in a corrections facility for teenage boys in 1960s Massachusetts (42-year-old Moshfegh grew up in Boston). Eileen is slogging through a dreary life, taking care of her belligerent alcoholic father and fantasizing about the sex she’s not having when she meets Rebecca, a dazzling psychologist who comes to the prison, played with verve by Anne Hathaway. The two embark on a friendship with blurred lines that reaches improbably high stakes in the third half of the story.

After premiering at Sundance this year to critical acclaim, Eileen’s success has prompted excitement around more Moshfegh adaptations (the author, who was also a producer on Eileen, has hinted in the past about a My Year of Rest and Relaxation film). Below, Moshfegh shares why Anne Hathaway was the perfect casting, along with the books, shows and music the author is currently into:

What was it like to return to the material in Eileen and work with it again?

It was fun that I wasn’t the only one bringing the goods to the table, or seeing Eileen from one point of view, but working collaboratively with my co-writer, Luke Goebel, and with William Oldroyd, the director. We all shared the same vision for the film and the characters, but this opened up the perspective in a much wider way. Eileen wasn’t just a reflection of a piece of me, it was a reflection of a piece of all of us.

Writing a novel is a very solitary act, while filmmaking is quite collaborative. But it sounds like this was a positive experience for you.

It was actually a relief. I don’t usually think that two heads are better than one—or three in this case—but it was really the first collaboration I’d worked on that had been my initial idea. I’m sure I was controlling at the beginning, but I never felt that we were sacrificing anything that was really meaningful to me. It’s a loyal adaptation. And the ways it grew to be different from the book feel totally appropriate for how a story shifts into cinema.

What was it like to see Anne [Hathaway] and Thomasin [McKenzie] bring your characters to life?

Luke and I watched all of the tapes for Eileen’s auditions, and it was fascinating—it’s really, really eerie to invent a character, and then 10 years later, see all these actual people be that character. We saw a lot of great young actors try out; they were all amazing. Thomasin’s tape was the last to arrive, and it was just chilling, from the moment she appeared on the screen. I’d seen her in other movies, but when she showed up as Eileen, it was really seeing Eileen for the first time. She just brought so much tenderness and vulnerability, and her face is so incredibly expressive and subtle. She was so intelligent and rigorous about understanding the character. She studied the book and we talked a lot—she had a lot of questions.

And then with Annie, in hindsight, I can’t believe I hadn’t been thinking of Annie while I was writing the book, because she’s so perfectly Rebecca. I’d always thought about Rebecca’s character as maybe a real person, but she’s a real person who’s pretending to be a movie star and has this larger-than-life quality. The impact Anne has on screen is just immediately dazzling. So that really added to the impact that she had on Eileen. She had that impact on everybody from the beginning. I think the casting was amazing.

Jumping into the Culture Diet questions, what’s currently on your reading list?

I just finished a new book called Contradiction Days. It’s a memoir by my friend JoAnna Novak, whose poetry I know and whose novels I know. And because she’s a friend of mine, I know something about her life. This memoir is about her being pregnant with her son and going to Taos by herself to write about the painter Agnes Martin, and trying to get into the head of this other woman while also becoming someone else on the way to being a mother. I read it more than twice. It was so disturbing in a way that I hadn’t expected. I’ve tried to write some personal essays and nonfiction in the past, and I always find that I resort to comedy or narrative drama and storytelling as a way to tie up the things about myself that I don’t understand. JoAnna took that on, and wrote about those unfinished mysteries really beautifully.

Are you an avid reader?

It’s pretty shameful, actually. I don’t read the way that I would like to as a full-time writer, and now that I’m working more in film, especially, I can have 14-hour work days. I would love to reach for a book of short stories at the end of the day, but I just want to go cross-eyed at some Netflix or something.

Speaking of Netflix, what have you been watching?

I was just at an artist residency in Wyoming, where I was a total maniac and wrote from 6:00 in the morning till 10:00 p.m at night, and I started watching the latest season of Love Is Blind—so engrossing and hilarious.

Do you remember the last film you saw in theaters?

Killers of the Flower Moon. The performances were amazing. I didn’t read the book, but as someone who’s interested in adaptation, I’m always thinking, “What story did they find and pull out? And then how did they tell it?” I thought that was interesting, how it bounced to this moment in history and time and a place that was so foreign to me. Even though the story’s pretty dark, I found it to be just a pleasure to watch.

What albums, playlists or artists are you listening to right now?

I’m not really listening to any music right now. I don’t know—I’m so sensitive to music that when I listen to it, I can’t be doing anything else.

Do you collect art at all? What’s the last piece of art that you bought or admired?

I do collect art. I collect sort of naive, really bad oil paintings, usually student work. And I also collect these funny framed vintage pictures that were commercially produced of babies. They’re supposed to look really cute and dreamy, but to me they look totally weird and eerie. I probably have a dozen of them at this point. If you go into a lot of antique stores, once you start seeing them, you’ll see them everywhere—these babies that are just watching you. They look more like dolls than real people. I found one of those recently on a trip to Las Vegas.

Do you have them hanging in your home?

No. I used to, and then I took them all down, and now I’m just hoarding them.

Eileen is now playing in theaters.