I Used to Be Funny, a smart and contemplative movie that recently received high praise at Tribeca Film Festival, is now available to watch in theaters or from home. Written and directed by Ally Pankiw (who has previously written for Schitt’s Creek and directed episodes of The Great), the movie stars Rachel Sennott, best known for her star-making turn in Bottoms. Sennott plays Sam, a stand-up comedian who hasn’t felt like getting up on stage since her recent traumatic experience.

Though it does veer more toward drama than comedy, I Used To Be Funny is far from lacking in humor. Instead, Pankiw’s script and Sennott’s performance perfectly combine to explore how women are silenced in the wake of violence visited upon them. While Sam struggles with her personal PTSD and stagnant career, she must also look out for the rebellious and grieving Brooke (Olga Petsa), a teenager she used to nanny. The movie also stars Jason Jones, Sabrina Jalees, Caleb Hearon, and Ennis Esmer.

While at Tribeca Film Festival, Screen Rant interviewed Pankiw about the inspiration behind I Used To Be Funny and its protagonist’s stand-up comedy background. The filmmaker also shared her first impression of Sennott and her favorite memories of working alongside the up-and-coming actor on set.

I Used To Be Funny Is A Very Relevant Story That Needed To Be Told

Screen Rant: Seeing that you’ve written for Schitt’s Creek is a squee-worthy moment for me, but this is obviously much darker than that. How did I Used To Be Funny first come about?

Ally Pankiw: The themes of the film are really relevant and personal to me, and I just was sick of seeing healing tied to events, like justice or retribution or revenge or love. I think that the truth of recovery, healing, and trauma is that it is a lifelong process, and there are a lot of ups and downs. A lot of the time, it is a quieter process than is represented in pop culture, so I wanted to try and do my best to give a more authentic and maybe more nuanced look at that.

I found it really interesting how it goes back and forth in time, like we are processing with Sam in the moment. Was that part of the reasoning to not have a linear narrative?

Ally Pankiw: Yeah, I wanted to challenge the audience to meet Sam when she is a little bit harder to love; when she is very passive and not an active participant in her own life, she has walls up, and she’s stuck in the past because I think we hold victims to a very high standard. I wanted to retroactively reveal the person who is very easy to love and go, “Look at this person that was taken away from us. Look at what’s taken away from young women when these things happen. Look what’s taken away from society when these things happen.”

We lose so much joy, we lose so much art, and we lose so much humor and comedy from such interesting people. I wanted to show that. Also, trauma victims’ minds hold things called trauma capsules, and they’re returning to the same moments and memories and retreading the same neural pathways. I wanted to live in that feeling and experience a bit in the film.

How did you decide the amount of Sam’s stand-up sets that would be included, and what inspired the exploration of her job as a comedian?

Ally Pankiw: The reason I wanted to make her a comedian is because of what we were just talking about; young women’s humor and voices being taken away from them. It was a very clear visual representation of humor taken away from women with trauma, and to have her be a stand-up comic was an exaggerated version of that theme.

We’ve lost so many actual women from the entertainment industry, and there’s this whole other metaphor at play of the women that Louis C.K. bullied out of the industry. We’ve lost a lot of art from women who have been harassed and assaulted in entertainment and in comedy, specifically, so it harkened back to that.

In terms of how much of her stand-up we showed, it was just enough to show she’s good. She has a promising future, and then she’s cut off at the knees when this thing happens to her. We also wanted to show that she’s obviously talking about things that are a little bit threatening to a demographic that has been able to say anything they wanted, historically — older, straight white dudes. We wanted to do that in a way that is both charming but also disorienting to that demographic, and to leave you wanting more because when this is taken away from this character, that’s part of it. We crave the charm and the art and the joy that has been lost.

Rachel Sennott Makes Movie Magic In I Used To Be Funny

Rachel was amazing in this, and she’s been an indie darling lately — deservedly so. What brought you to her and how did working with her help kind of further evolve the character of Sam?

Ally Pankiw: The best. She’s the best human; the best actress. She’s amazing. I had seen her stand-up initially, and I had been a fan. I had met her through that scene and that community, and then like everyone in COVID, I saw Shiva Baby and was like, “Oh, damn. She can act as well.” Then we sent her the script, she loved it, and we started working together right away. I think she definitely contributed to the stand-up material. She brought her own voice and specific style to those sets in the film.

In a more subtle way, she brought out this very sweet side to the character. I think on the page, Sam was a little bit harder and had a bit more of an edge, and I’m just so grateful to Rachel that she brought that inherent earnestness that she has as a human. She is just such a sweet, charming human, and we leaned into that with Sam, which was really helpful.

I love how the dynamic between Sam and Brooke is central to the storytelling really, and that’s whose opinion Sam is most concerned about. Can you talk about those complicated feelings given Brooke’s reaction to Sam’s trauma?

Ally Pankiw: Brooke is very much also a metaphor for the faction of society that, no matter how perfect a victim is, thinks it’s not enough. Sam does everything right in this scenario, and she is what we as a society would consider the standard for a perfect victim. And yet when that is the case, there is always a group of people in society and culture — and one that includes young women — that just don’t want to believe that these beloved father figures in pop culture could be capable of these terrible things.

I think that, obviously, Sam loves Brooke and wants to help her and wants to make sure that her life is not going to be terribly affected by this. She also, in a slightly less altruistic way, thinks that maybe if Brooke believes her, she can have what she needs. She can have that little piece she’s been missing to move to the next stage of healing. I think Brooke not believing her is really a wound that keeps opening.

Do you have a favorite moment of working with Rachel on set?

Ally Pankiw: Oh, so many. She’s so generous as an actor and as a collaborator. There was a cake that we had made for her, and the timing of when it arrived on set was very poor. It was when we were shooting something very difficult, and I remember a PA or coordinator was outside the door being like, “We have the cake…” I’m sure you can imagine the day it was, but there’s just these very funny photos and videos of Rachel cutting this cake. She’s just been crying in a scene, but she’s handing out cake to the crew.

She was just a delight. She was just the perfect balance of a seasoned professional that was so lovely. She had so much fun with Olga and her other cast members. Watching her and Olga is actually probably my favorite memory; just her and Olga legitimately becoming friends on set. Rachel stepping into that role of cool older sister archetype for Olga as an actress was really lovely, and that was really beautiful to see.

I Used To Be Funny Was A New, “Vulnerable” Challenge For Ally Pankiw

This was your feature film territorial debut. You’ve done a lot of work in the industry previous to that, but was there anything that was most challenging or most surprising when stepping into this new phase of creation?

Ally Pankiw: It’s very vulnerable because when you’ve both written and directed something, there’s no one to hide behind and go like, “No, that’s about them and their mom.”

Does the director in you ever fight the writer in you?

Ally Pankiw: I think the writer and the director in me are a little bit more harmonious, only because the writer in me has had to watch my director self before. Things do get better when they are shorter. Sometimes when you kill your babies, those painful changes and cuts on the writing side make something stronger. I’ve witnessed that over my years directing and working with different writers and different producers, and you really do see how sometimes notes do help.

Of course, there are some things you have to maintain and be like, “No, I am going to die on this small hill.” But I’ve seen enough times where killing your darling can overall make the whole better, so I think that’s been really helpful. After all my TV work, I was like, “My writer self has to be a little bit more open to my director self and not fight those cuts and those changes.” It’s a challenging balancing act, but you get used to it.

You’ve been on the festival circuit with this for some time now. Do you have a favorite reaction to the movie or just a favorite aspect of conversation it’s opened up?

Ally Pankiw: I love all the avenues of conversation it’s opened up. It’s a polarizing sort of film, and I think it’s something that people talk about afterward. I’ve just loved hearing even my friends reporting back from other cities being like, “I was at a bar across the street from a theater, and I heard people still talking about the film an hour later.” That kind of stuff has been really cool because, love it or hate it, if people are talking about these topics, that’s only helpful.

But I think my favorite reaction was the first time I watched it at SXSW with an audience, and there was a cheer that let out. Rachel’s character is obviously very passive in the movie, and there is a choice that she makes in the film — not to give a spoiler, but it’s a small action in the grand scheme of a life. It’s not the biggest thing that someone can do, but when she does do it and does stand up for herself and for Brooke, it’s a quiet and contained moment. But it feels like, for some people at that point, an explosion in an action movie. There was this cheer for her character for this small act, and that felt really nice.

I Used To Be Funny was part of the 2024’s Tribeca Film Festival line-up. It is currently playing in select theaters and is available to rent or buy on digital platforms.