Entertainment·Video

Molly McGlynn, Emily Hampshire and Maddie Ziegler talk Fitting In

The new movie Fitting In, loosely based on Canadian director Molly McGlynn’s own experience, sheds light on MRKH syndrome — a disorder that affects the female reproductive system. Maddie Ziegler, Emily Hampshire and McGlynn speak to CBC News about crafting the film.

New movie sheds light on MRKH syndrome, which affects female reproductive system

Jackson Weaver · CBC News · Posted: Feb 03, 2024 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

Stars Maddie Ziegler and Emily Hampshire on making the first MRKH movie

7 hours agoDuration 2:39Maddie Ziegler and Emily Hampshire talk to CBC about the importance of their film Fitting In — which focuses on MRKH, a rare syndrome affecting the reproductive system. It is based on the personal experience of Canadian director Molly McGlynn, who was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome at 16.

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Molly McGlynn never saw herself making this movie. Not only was the idea of putting this story on screen too painful, it was too terrifying.

That's because the plot of Fitting In,which premiered in theatres this week, was directly inspired from her own life — an "emotional horror story" that, aptly, originally bore the title Bloody Hell.

Now McGlynn is glad she made it — and glad to have directed the first movie to focus on the medical issues at the centre of Fitting In.

But, she told CBC News in a recent interview, she was feeling butterflies right up until the cameras started rolling — and not only around putting her own past on the big screen.

"I remember prior to shooting it, I was telling Jane Fonda what it was about," said McGlynn, who had previously worked with Fonda on the set of the Netflix comedy series Grace and Frankie.

"And I said it's my second feature. And she looked at me dead in the eyes, and she said: 'This is very dangerous territory.'"

WATCH | CBC's Eli Glasner reviews Fitting In:

New dramedy Fitting In 'best coming of age film' of late

20 hours agoDuration 7:42Canadian filmmaker Molly McGynn's new dramedy Fitting In reaches into her own past. When McGynn was 16, she found out she had a rare medical condition known as MRKH. She hopes the movie will help others diagnosed with it to feel less alone.

Luckily for McGlynn, the early reviews are in, and Fitting In is sitting pretty on a comfortable stack of mostly favourable critical responses. Many of those reviews are couched in respect for the film's focus: a 16-year-old girl grappling with a diagnosis of Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome.

The condition meant that Lindy (like McGlynn, who was also diagnosed at 16) was born with a shortened vaginal canal, without a uterus or cervix, and would never have sex or bear children without "manual or surgical assistance."

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That made McGlynn question her womanhood and raised concerns about her upcoming sex life that dropped like "a nuclear bomb in a teenager's life." But even still, she decided to not only go on with the project but to try to infuse it with humour.

"Essentially it's about bodies and how they fail us," she said. "And bodies, to me, are absurd, and they are ripe for humour."

Rita and Lindy

To carry forward that humour, McGlynn landed on American actor Maddie Ziegler to play Lindy and Schitt's Creekstar Emily Hampshire to play her therapist mother, Rita.

To Hampshire, striking that balance — especially when the person who lived through that trauma is there with you in the room — wasn't easy. But finding a way to laugh at, and through, the pain eventually became somewhat natural.

"We call it a coming-of-age traumedy, because it is such a traumatic thing that happened to her," Hampshire said. "But there's so much humour in [McGlynn], the way she tells her story. And I think at least for me, it made it easier to approach playing somebody's journey."