Ilana Glazer admits she’s been really worried about what people would think of her new movie, “False Positive.” While a dark comedy at times, the Hulu movie is quite different compared to the colorful comedy of “Broad City,” the sitcom she co-created with co-star Abbi Jacobson.
Co-written by Glazer and the film’s director John Lee, “False Positive” is a horror thriller of sorts about a couple (Glazer and Justin Theroux) who entrust a mysterious doctor (Pierce Brosnan) to help them conceive. “I’ve been really nervous to be honest,” Glazer says. “It’s like how are people going to react? It’s like a healthy practice for me to make something that is not aimed at pleasing. That’s a very big deal for me spiritually. … But I think we accurately captured what we were trying to do, which is to make the audience feel like, ‘Am I feeling this correctly? Something’s off.’”
Off is an understatement. Without giving too much away, Glazer’s character gets pregnant but what follows is anything but maternal bliss.
Popular on Variety
Before it was even released, “False Positive” was being compared to “Rosemary’s Baby.” “Some artists are worth separating from their art and I separate Roman Polanski from ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and I’m like, I love that movie,” Glazer says.
Both Brosnan and Theroux’s seemingly charming characters are not what they first appear to be. “The fact that they would lend themselves to modeling the evils of the patriarchy as handsome successful white males was so appreciated by me,” Glazer says, adding she was not cracking James Bond jokes while shooting. “I was more about asking Pierce about ‘Mrs. Doubtfire.’ That’s my favorite Pierce role. That and ‘Remington Steele.’”
Glazer was promoting the film while she was just weeks away from giving birth to her and biologist husband David Rooklin’s first child. “I’m giving myself a self-imposed maternity leave, because there is no support for writers and actors for maternity leave. So I’m just creating it for myself,” she says. “And after that, I know I’ll be so excited to get back on stage, get back to work, but I’m ready to just nest and be in this dreamy baby world for three or four months.”