Behind 'Cat Person': How new film adapts divisive dating essay — and calls out problematic Harrison Ford characters

Like so many others, Susanna Fogel was fascinated by reading Cat Person, Kristen Roupenian’s short story about a young female college student who reluctantly sleeps with an older man, when it was first published in the New Yorker in 2017. The piece quickly went viral, becoming an inescapable flashpoint for debates about gender, dating, privilege and consent in the modern era.

“It was talked about widely with my group of friends, and this article was really provocative and polarizing and made people really angry and really passionate,” Fogel (Booksmart, The Spy Who Dumped Me) tells Yahoo Entertainment about her new film adaptation of the essay.

“And so did the movie,” she adds, referencing the film’s mixed reviews from January's Sundance Film Festival. “And the movie will continue to do that, and I'm totally game for that.”

Written for the screen by Michelle Ashford, Cat Person stars Emilia Jones (Coda) as Margot, a 20-year-old college sophomore who works behind the concession stand of a arthouse movie theater. After she playfully mocks the snack choices of older cinephile Robert (Succession’s Nicholas Braun), he asks her for her number, and the pair engage in a long flirty text message relationship, which eventually leads to face-to-face meet-ups.

Margot, though, keeps envisioning the horrible and brutal acts of violence the awkward and somewhat enigmatic Robert could do to her. It’s partly why Cat Person is being described as a “genre-bending thriller.”

“I think that as women, we live in a multi genre. Our lives have many genres,” Fogel says. “We're always afraid for our lives to a subconscious, pervasive degree because we are always aware that we are vulnerable to people that are bigger than us, specifically men. So that's always going on no matter what else is going on. There's always a bit of a fight or flight that exists in our brains.”

Margot and Robert’s relationship eventually becomes physical — Margot engages almost out of sympathy for him — leading to the cringiest kiss scene and cringiest, longest, most grueling sex scene you’ll see in a film this year.

“Honestly, we didn't rehearse that kiss,” Fogel reveals. “We talked about what was bad about it, and then we just did it. It was fun. It's really hard not to laugh. I mean, it's really hard for the actors to not laugh into each other's mouths the entire time. The minute we would call ‘Cut,’ they would be completely beside themselves laughing.”

To make the sex scene less awkward for Jones and Braun, Fogel created storyboards of every specific shot they’d capture, via a flip book that she says almost resembled a comic strip. “It's the funniest flip book to look through. When I showed the actors, they were like, ‘This is hilarious. We can't wait to shoot this.’ And then actually making it was really fun.”

There are some significant changes made to the film version of the story. Braun is not heavyset, as Robert is described in the short story, which was criticized for fat-shaming. Margot’s college roommate (as played by Geraldine Viswanathan) is a much more felt presence. And the film continues well on after Robert’s climactic final text.

There’s also the specificity of Robert’s movie fandom. He doesn’t just loves film, he loves Harrison Ford. He learned how to romance women from Harrison Ford. His idea of a great date is showing Margot The Empire Strikes Back, which bores her to death.

And along the way, the film uncovers a startling trend: Ford’s most iconic characters were problematic at best, creepers at worst. His Star Wars icon Han Solo, Blade Runner’s Rick Deckard and even Indiana Jones are all seen or referenced forcefully grabbing and kissing women with little consent.

“That was Michelle's choice,” Fogel says about how they landed on Ford being Robert’s idol. “We went back and forth about that [being] too basic of a choice. But then we're like, ‘No, it's the every[man] choice. To make Robert's ideal some obscure art film thing I think pulls him further away from a relatable avatar for a male viewer. And the Harrison Ford thing is so in the canon of what shapes the minds of people, and specifically, men, and their ideas of romance and the kind of men they want to be. And this pinnacle of masculinity embodied in Harrison Ford and what he represents in the world.

“The argument is not that we should be banning Harrison Ford movies, it's just the context in which Robert became Robert involves this, which is sort of an unexamined part of the culture that is really pervasive. Just like we don't spend a lot of time trying to ban The Rolling Stones, nor should we, but those lyrics don't age well. It's all of that. So you can hold both things. You can love Harrison Ford's performances and those movies, and also not love men mimicking that behavior in actual real world life in 2023.”

Of course, problematic characters in old movies is hardly exclusive to Ford. Fogel mentions a film from as recent as 2007, Knocked Up, which has taken plenty of lumps in more recent years, including from co-star Katherine Heigl herself.

“Also, I'm sure he's a lovely person who wouldn’t be defending what we think is problematic about it,” the filmmaker says. “He just represents a thing to people.

“It’s just like, no wonder Robert thought it was going to go differently. No wonder he ended up where he ended up, he grew up on those movies. He grew up on watching Knocked Up. He grew up on all these movies that tell you that it's going to end differently than the reality was even then. But particularly now, where the genders are constantly warring online, and it's just become a much more heated time in which to try to find connection and love, even though people are still trying to do it despite everything.”

Cat Person is now playing.