‘Girls State’ Directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss on Why They Needed a Taylor Swift Song in Their Movie

When the movie Boys State hit streaming in the summer of 2020, it was perfectly timed for a bunch of very unfortunate reasons. Not only was it the height of the COVID-19 pandemic (vaccines wouldn't become widely available for another 9 months), but the country was in deep protest following the murder of George Floyd. And in four months, Americans would participate in one of the most divisive presidential elections in history. Boys State, despite being filmed two years earlier, somehow managed to capture all of the angst of that time and provide a window into how young people were processing that moment.

The follow-up film, Girls State, just hit Apple TV+. It manages to achieve the same under wildly different circumstances. Following a group of 1,100 women participating in a weeklong government simulation called Girls State, the directors filmed in the weeks immediately after the Supreme Court leak of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Imagine being an 18-year-old girl in Missouri trying to process your rights being taken away in real time with a thousand other women and you'll get an idea why this movie is so powerful.

The husband and wife team behind the movie, Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, spoke with Cosmopolitan about finding their lead subjects, what they wanted this movie to achieve, and how it felt to watch young girls fight back in a moment of political setback.

Tell me about getting into Girls State after successfully launching Boys State in 2020. Did you always know you wanted to do both? Or did you have to see how one did before you did the other?

JM: All of the above. In 2017, we were talking to Girls State in Texas at the same time we were talking to Boys State. We didn't know where we would get access. It was the Boys State program that drew our attention initially. And they were actually very open to having us come, and the girls program was not as open.

AM: They drew our attention because the Boys State legislature in Texas had voted to secede from the Union in 2017.

JM: The question for us was like, how are young people processing this political moment? It wasn't like we set out to make a movie about boys. But Boys State became such an interesting look at masculinity and how that translates into political positioning and behavior. But this was an incomplete project without the girls conversation. It was unfinished business.

What was the response from the Boys State organization like after the first movie came out? And and how did that impact getting Girls State going?

AM: It was a very positive response.

JM: It really helped that we could show Girls State leadership in Missouri the film. The girls we were casting could also watch the film. With documentaries, it's better to show them your work than to do a song and dance about what the film is going to be. But what was hard was the fear factor, and inviting a comparison that we didn't necessarily want. We wanted Girls State to be a sibling and not a sequel. We were having some moments of doubt and I said, let's do it, if for no other reason than our 16-year-old daughter Zoe can be a production assistant on production. If it's a total failure, at least she got to do that.

Well, did she like being a PA?

AM: She did. But it's a hard job! She learned a lot. She learned to drive on set.

JM: But soon as we started to cast the film and we met some of the girls who would be in the movie, we knew.

AM: We got less nervous. I would watch them cook dinner and be entertained.

What does casting look like for a movie like this?

AM: We were nervous about finding kids who were as extraordinary as the kids that we found in Boys State. The Girls State program was very helpful in sending out a blast to everybody that was headed to the camp that year and asking all 600 of them who wanted to talk to us. There was a certain group that reached out, we Zoomed with many of them. But it became very clear who had the confidence, both intellectually but also emotional confidence. Were they capable of sharing their feelings in a way that didn't feel performative? So then we went to Missouri and we filmed a little bit with them at home with their families. Jesse went to prom.

JM: I never went to prom in high school so this was, like, a dream fulfilled. Without a date, but with a camera operator. [Laughs] It was wild to go to prom in Missouri and 2022. I remember a kid showed up in an 18-wheeler truck he had hired to transport him like a limo. Only in Missouri.

What kind of conversations do you have with subjects—and I imagine with parents, as well—about what it really means to be in a documentary like this?

JM: I think it's, first of all, recognizing a fortitude that they bring to the table and an openness of spirit, and then respecting that within a relationship of trust that you've built over time. And then there are always exit ramps, if it's a relationship that both parties don't feel like is going to be successful or comfortable. Building a largely female crew was part of that journey for us in production, to make sure that women cinematographers were the ones "gazing," as it were, at these girls. Involving their parents in conversations, meeting their parents, answering many questions from their parents about the nature of the project.

AM: They are a self-selected group in the sense that many of them are debate champions. They're very used to being on stage. Or they're high up in student government. So they're familiar enough with some of the situations they were going to be in at Girls State.

JM: One of the powerful messages of the film and something we know as parents of teenage girls, too, is how hard on themselves they are, and how much scrutiny they bring. We had to bring a certain awareness of the camera as a degree of scrutiny that they've invited, but also still bear in this experience. Fundamentally, they had the fortitude to let the camera be with them, and maybe in some cases drew some strength and courage from it, too.

You filmed this documentary in the summer of 2022 between the leak of the SCOTUS Roe v. Wade ruling and the more formal announcement weeks later. How did it feel for you as adults to watch young women process this?

AM: One of the unfinished pieces of business after filming Boys State really was, what's the abortion conversation going to look like in an all-female space? And that is what Girls State would have offered in any year. What we couldn't have anticipated was the leak of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, like, a week before all the girls convened in Missouri. Watching these girls have this moment of empowerment, having that happen in tandem to that ruling coming down was... holding those two truths at the same time was tricky, but it's also kind of the way things work.

That didn't stop them from wanting to talk about it. It didn't quiet them in their mission to keep pushing. That's the beauty of young people. They've got a lot of energy and they know that this is going to be a long fight. It is bittersweet to watch both the optimism and the recognition of the ceiling.

JM: It's a reminder though that the real world intrudes. This may be a camp and a simulation, but these girls do also live in the real world in which their rights are being restricted and taken away.

I want to end on a bit of a lighter note. No spoilers, but there's a very appropriate Taylor Swift song used over the end credits of the film. What does it take to clear a Taylor Swift song for a movie like this?

AM: Our younger daughter, who's 14, watched a rough cut of the film with a bunch of people. Her note to me after having heard a lot about production where I talked about how often all these kids, who had very different politics, would sing Taylor Swift, was like, where's the Taylor Swift? What's happening? Her note was like, you gotta get Taylor Swift in this movie. But how that happened is really an Apple question.

JM: We wrote a really nice letter about why the song matters in this film. And to Apple's credit, they have more muscle than we have. They found the right ear to bend and we got permission to use it. So I don't know if she's seen the film. I hope she sees it, but we're just glad the song is in the film.

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