I remember watching Desiree Akhavan’s web series, The Slope, on my janky laptop in 2010 and knowing I was watching a star being born. Akhavan plays one-half of a Park Slope–dwelling lesbian couple who’s constantly doing something awkward or mistaken, and the series’ deadpan humor and nonexistent production values set her apart from her film-school classmates. It also paved the way for her to co-write, direct, and often star in later TV shows and films The Bisexual, Appropriate Behavior, and The Miseducation of Cameron Post, all of which deal with sexuality and family in one way or another.
In her new memoir, You’re Embarrassing Yourself, Akhavan details the mortifying moments that have punctuated her life, from her childhood to her adolescence to her strikingly successful career. While describing everything from her treatment for an eating disorder to experiencing the upsides and downsides of being a rising star in her 20s, Akhavan explicitly writes the book she wishes a younger version of herself could have been able to read and learn from. She closes each chapter with advice to that younger self, as well as to her fellow aspiring filmmakers, that basically boils down to “don’t do what I did.” However, the message that actually comes across is that shame, body dysmorphia, humiliating habits, and family dysfunction might just be an important part of the recipe that creates a great artist.
I had a fun dinner with Akhavan after the Tribeca Film Festival, where she was a judge this year, and talked with her about her life (in a state of upheaval) and her career (hurtling toward some of the most exciting work of her life thus far.)
It seems like everything that you’ve done has been really personal and infused with your innermost essence. Having watched your show and your films, nothing in your book really came as a surprise to me. I didn’t come away from it being like: Oh my God, she’s a totally different person than who I thought she was.
But you do go more deeply into the experiences that shaped you, like being voted the ugliest girl at your high school and the stigma of having immigrant parents. How was the process of writing this book different from making your more autofictional work onscreen?
I felt like there were a lot of stories that didn’t make sense in movie format or TV format, and when this came together, it was like, okay, where do these stories live? And they made sense in this format, these really humiliating coming-of-age experiences. And I think a lot of how I felt about being Iranian and being lost in the diaspora made sense in this format.
Writing this book was also really, really challenging. I never realized how much I relied on the fiction element of autofiction, because I always kind of worked in that genre and made things that were very personal. The truth is, the second you write something down, it becomes fiction. Then you invite hundreds of people to collaborate on it with you, and for the convenience of the story, everything morphs.
In the book, you go into detail about how hard it was to get your films and TV show made. How do you tolerate Hollywood’s culture of constant rejection? You’re just really used to it at this point, or you just have never known anything else?
You can tolerate anything. I really hope that one day I get thicker skin, but I think all creatives are really sensitive people and you just get your feelings hurt a lot, but now you come to expect that nothing will work out. With that said, I really go into things believing they’re going to get made, and I don’t want to be the kind of person who accepts false starts, because then I think your whole life can become false starts. Your whole career can be false starts, and you can support yourself very well on false starts when you’re working with Hollywood. But I think this work requires a real dance between being chill about that and demanding more.
I can’t say this from personal experience — I haven’t done a lot of work writing for other people — but from what I’ve witnessed, the more you shape yourself in the image that people ask for, the more they shove you around, and then they have no use for you. They have no use for the project because they’re no longer that invested. You’re no longer that invested. You’ll get paid, but the project won’t necessarily get made.
What was the last TV show or movie that you really loved?
There was a film called The Substance at Cannes that really blew my mind and just reminded me of what’s possible. It was really inspiring. I was like, oh, you can do so much. It’s a body-horror film with Demi Moore about how you go to war with your own body as you age. And it completely broke my heart and revved me up. There was so much female rage on the screen, and it was so refreshing and it was funny and disgusting, and it was scary. My heart rate was high. I felt everything.
I think when you do the thing you love for money, it really destroys the love and really squashes that very earnest, honest piece of you into dust. And I think at some point in your life — I believe at this point in my life, where I’m in my late 30s, I’m just staring at this crossroads.
You’re only in your late 30s?
I’m 39, knocking on 40. I feel like I’ve been forced to reevaluate my relationship to everything — my relationship to film, my relationship to movies, my relationship to all of the identity markers I have. Especially writing this book really forced me to face myself. I think a big part of reviving any romance I had with filmmaking is just trying to really enjoy movies and remember why I do this in the first place. Not my ambition for myself, but just my deep, nerdy fangirl love.
Your book ends on a note of being ready to have a family. Are you trying to have kids now?
I really want to, and I was in the process of getting sperm, and then my girlfriend and I broke up, and so now I’m in a weird phase of what is my life now? As I’m about to turn 40, as I’m not quite sure where I want to live. I don’t want to do this alone.
I am still in love with my work, too, and I am really in love with filmmaking. It is a passion. It is the main relationship in my life, and such a huge part of my every second of living has been strategizing how to make the things I want to make. That kind of passion, romance — I would love to transfer it to a human.
What are your next projects?
Do you know who Benito Skinner is? @Bennydrama7 is his TikTok handle. He’s written a really funny show called Overcompensating that is inspired by his own experiences playing it straight at Georgetown. It’s really funny. It’s a hard comedy show that is like really frat-y. It just made me laugh in a way that I hadn’t in a while.
I’ve also written a Farsi-language drama that is about the Islamic Revolution and very much inspired by my family during that time and the story of those who leave and those who stay. I think I always wondered, “Well, what happened? Why were we the ones who left?”
I’ve wanted to tell this story for a really long time. I think making this film will mark a huge shift. Each project has been a really different shade of my life, and I have moved on after it kind of a different person with different interests.
This film in particular is so much about my family and about the questions I had about my family, and I’m ready to put it to bed. Not that it changed me into something better; it’s more like I got to close a fucking chapter and get something out of my system.
I’m also writing a romantic comedy, which I started writing more recently. The Iran film will probably shoot this year, and the romantic comedy will probably shoot right after it. The rom-com is just like Nora Ephron, really a different step, which I’m really looking forward to.
Those all sound really exciting to me. The one about your family — I wouldn’t feel comfortable working on a project like that unless my parents were dead.
The first incarnation of this film was way too close to the bone, and then close to the bone didn’t make sense for a better film. You keep making these choices for craft that you’re like, Oh, but what if he was actually this guy? What if the nemesis was their colleague? Then suddenly it builds on itself, and every element takes a new shape that’s in service of a capital-M movie. The truth no longer matters. The truth no longer exists.
If anything, it gets in the way.
One hundred percent. What remains is a kernel of this larger statement you were making. I think for me, it was about your ambition destroying you, the life you build becoming a prison. The life you scheme and fight for, building your own prison basically, which is, I think, kind of also what happened to Iran in kicking out the shah and ushering in Khomeini.
That’s the kernel of truth. Then all the elements change, and now it’s no longer really a story about my family as much as it is this feeling I had that was inspired by my family.
Are you going to be in either of the two movies that you’re writing?
You should hire real actors, is the thing that my 30s has taught me. I’m really excited to hire real actors to do real acting. I think it worked well for me for a little while to be in my own stuff. I had a good time, but I’ve also had many years of working with great people. After you’ve seen Jean Smart in Hacks doing her thing, you’re kind of like, “All right, maybe there’s a reason we hire professionals.” And it’s so awe inspiring to be able to hand the reins off.
I think you’re being too hard on yourself! But tell me more about the rom-com. What else do you know about it that can be shared?
It’s about two women, so it’s gay, and they’re both in their late 30s, and they’ve both just had a lot of failure. And it’s a lot about this stage of life, of picking yourself up. How are you going to let this failure change you? And are you going to let it cripple you? And also, what are you going to do with your broken heart? How is it going to regenerate for the next phase of your life is the question I’ve been asking myself.
So, you’re making a movie about falling in love, but you’re not in love right now?
When I first conceived it, I was falling in love. And it’s interesting writing it now that it didn’t work out. It’s been a really brutal journey of typing through tears. And it’s great, because it actually focuses you and gives you this motivation to be like, “Yeah, I want to take these feelings and harness it into something creative.”
It’s funny, I read Nora Ephron’s novel Heartburn recently, and it was really comforting, because I was like, “Oh, she was my age when her husband cheated on her and her marriage collapsed.” And, yeah, it was her second marriage and she was super-pregnant and it just sucked. And yet she got her shit together. And I think sometimes maybe you have to do it wrong all the ways before you can do it right. And that’s what I keep telling myself.