Kris Swanberg rightfully fancies herself as far more than the wife of illustrious mumblecore director Joe Swanberg. She is a filmmaker in her own right. Though she may still be perfecting her craft. With her third film, Unexpected, the female Swanberg sought to thoughtfully divorce “pregnancy films” from the comedic context that it’s been hedged into time and again. Instead, she intended to make some earnest, genuine and from the perspective of an actual woman going through these actual motions. And for the most part, she has succeeded.

Unexpected, a title that applies to the central character’s pregnancy just as much as her friendship that develops with her young, underprivileged student, is a social think piece that couches racial issues in with ultrasounds and baby showers. Cobie Smulders whittles a human character – based largely on writer/director Kris Swanberg – that rings emotional bells even if the film somewhat fails to truly subvert the white savior platitudes its trying so hard to turn on its belly.

I sat down with Kris at the 2015 Seattle International Film Festival to discuss how her pregnancy in real life is reflected in Unexpected, the difficult position of women in film, her working relationship with husband Joe, working with doppelganger Cobie Smulders, the challenges inherent in being both a mom and a director, and that adorable child of theirs that keeps sneaking his way into their films.

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So how is doing a press tour pregnant?

Kris Swanberg: I’ve done it before, but I think it’ll be hard. I have to travel next month, the end of June. And I’ll be eight-and-a-half months pregnant. So that’ll be a little harder. We’re playing a BAM cinema fest, so that’s our New York premiere. So that’ll be what I’m doing then.

Are you taking downtime after?

KS: Yeah. The due date’s August 9. The movie come out mid-July, but I’ll be in Chicago at home, doing press from my house. And then taking the month of August off to just get no sleep and deal with a baby.

You’re going into it obviously with different expectations, being a mother for a second time?

KS: More fear. Definitely more terrifying, because I know what’s gonna happen. It’s gonna be sleep deprivation and a dirty house and craziness. But I’m really excited.

So you’ve said openly that this film has a deeply personal connection to you. Can you talk more about that and how that connection is obviously more than just about being a woman and being pregnant?

KS: A lot of it’s autobiographical. I used to be a high school teacher. I taught on the West side of Chicago. I taught for a few years. I taught Film and Video in a school similar to the one in the film, and had some amazing personal relationships with my kids that inspired the relationship in the movie. And then after I’d finished teaching, one of my students who had already graduated called me and told me she was pregnant when she was nineteen. And I was six months pregnant at the time. But it was much different in the film: I wasn’t trying to get her into college; we never had a big fight or anything like that.

But movies need drama.

KS: But movies need drama. So the movie’s definitely fictionalized. But that dynamic of me being this white, middle-class lady, pregnant at the same time as this low-income, African-American teenager—that dynamic came from personal experience, and was a really interesting thing to go through, and something I thought would be a great story to tell. And then beyond that, just having been pregnant and also wanting a career—those anxieties and that identity crisis—that was something she was going through in the film, and was very real to me, and not something I’d ever seen talked about, and something that, when I was going through it, I felt very alone in those feelings. So I also wanted to tell that story.

As you eluded to, the film explores this idea of the dichotomy between white, privileged, middle-class people and the inner-city, rough-and-tumble lifestyle through the lens of pregnancy. How do you think that something as universal as motherhood and pregnancy is able to cut through those differences, and allow people to connect?

KS: It is amazing, but it is something that allows people to connect across culture. Even if you’re in a foreign country, and you have a toddler and somebody else has a toddler, it’s amazing. You’re in a Plaza in the Ukraine or something. It’s amazing, someone that you wouldn’t ever be able to have a conversation with, or wouldn’t feel comfortable randomly talking to—if you have a child there, and they have a child there, you have an immediate connection, and it’s true with pregnancy. If I’m riding the bus in Chicago, it’s not just other white, middle-class moms who come up to me and go, “Oh, I know what that’s like.” Everyone does! Of course not everybody has children, but a lot of people do. And certainly, everyone has a mother. So it’s something—and maybe one of the only things—that everyone can connect to: children and the weather. Something everyone’s experiencing together, no matter what your circumstances. And it does bring people together.

So in the lead role you cast Cobie Smulders, who somewhat resembles you and your style, in the film. Were you looking for someone to fill in your shoes?

KS: No, definitely not. Cobie is a supermodel. Definitely I wasn’t like, “Who looks just like me?” But only after we started doing promotion for the movie, people were like, “She kind of looks like you.” We had similar hair at the time, and wear similar clothes. No, I definitely wasn’t looking for someone to fill my shoes, but she did a really good job. The truth is, I wrote the movie, or co-wrote the movie, so the dialogue that she says in the movie is stuff that I would say in real life, because I wrote it. So all of that combines and makes her feel a little bit like me.

So what were you looking for, in particular, in the Samantha role?

KS: I was looking for someone that could really relate to the character. I was really interested in finding someone that had a background in comedy. I was excited about, I’ve always been excited about, bringing someone from the comedic world into more of the dramatic role. Certainly my film isn’t a hardcore drama, and there’s a lot of room for comedy. And I thought, having someone that had much more of a comedic background, and allowing them to do more dramatic work, is easier than someone who has more of a dramatic background and trying to get them to instill a little bit of comedy, I felt. But Cobie, in particular, I connected with because she related to the script so much, and she, when we met, had a five-year-old daughter, and was like, “This is very real to me,” and was very open with me and vulnerable with me in our meeting about how she connected to it personally, and that meant a lot to me because it was very personal story for me, too. And I wanted to collaborate with someone that could really understand that. And so she did, and I think it speaks to the performance she gave, because she can relate to it so much.

And Cobie was, ironically enough, pregnant during the shoot. Did that add an extra layer of realism and/or did that present any logistical problems throughout the shoot?

KS: I think both. For sure, anytime that you see her belly in the movie, it’s her real belly. Even the ultrasound is her real ultrasound.

And then at the beginning, when she’s not pregnant…?

KS: She came to us when we shot at six months pregnant, but her belly was so small when we started that we were able to really hide it. And then she was with us for a month, so it was a big month of belly growth for her. We were shooting out of order, so we had to hide it a lot, and crop her chest-up sometimes, or position her so you couldn’t really see it, or put different clothes on her that worked. And then we had various amounts of padding we put on her belly to make her look more pregnant than she was. But in general, I think it was really cool. We certainly weren’t looking for someone who was pregnant. That just happened to happen. It was very cool.

The film deals with the sacrifices women are forced to make when starting a family. Do you find that as a director in an industry that’s already male-leaning, that that presents additional challenges to the creative work that you want to do?

KS: Definitely. Yeah. It’s for sure. And being pregnant right now with my second child, it’s something I’m very conscious of. I’m due in August, and there’re some projects I wasn’t able to pursue because the timing just wasn’t gonna work. And then having a newborn and breastfeeding and wanting to have that relationship to my baby is gonna prevent me from leaving for six months to work on a film. And it’s difficult for men as well. But it’s a different kind of thing, and men don’t feel it nearly as much.

As one of the characters in the film says, “I can’t stay home and breastfeed.”

KS: Right, yeah. And no one expects him to stay home at all. And men have their own set of pressures, for sure, and often feel that they have to be the breadwinners, and often are the breadwinners. And that’s difficult. But that territory has been explored many times over, I feel like in film. The issue for women is very complicated; it comes with all kinds of societal pressures and cultural norms, and your own personal issues with it, but my film certainly doesn’t solve any problems, but it does bring the issue to light, which when I was going through it; when I had my son, I felt very alone, not something that I looked around and I didn’t see anyone else having a problem with this. And since I’ve made the film, so many women have come up to me and said, “This is exactly what I went through,” or, “This is what I’m afraid of,” or “This is what I went through thirty years ago.” So it’s been so wonderful to talk about that.

Do you think that being a mom and being a director are at odds with each other?

KS: No. I think being a mom and doing anything else are at odds with each other. I think being a mom and having to, wanting to go work out, is a problem, because you have to leave your kid, and your kid does not want to be left, and there’s many people who think you should not be leaving your kid. I think even stay-at-home moms have a difficult time just saying, “I’m gonna go out once a week with my friends, and go out to eat.” I think that they’re conflicted about that. So having a full-fledged career is difficult. Now, some women—and this is definitely something the film explores—do not have that choice. Definitely the case with Jasmine in the film is, I’m sure she would’ve loved not to have to work and stay home with her kid. It really is a luxury; it really is a privilege. Having the choice is a privilege, but it’s a difficult choice to male.

An issue that’s getting a lot of attention right now in the film world—as it should—is the discussion about women having more prominent roles in film, women behind the camera, and there’s this glass ceiling for female directors that on some levels is attempting to be broken, but then there are also all these barriers in place. Is that something you’ve encountered throughout your career? And what is something you foresee as a solution to this problem?

KS: Oh my god. It’s not something I’ve encountered yet. I’ve been lucky enough to have enough control over my own films because they’re at such a small level, that I’m able to hire my own crew, I’m able to choose my investors and producers, and because of that I’m able to hire people that I don’t have power struggles with, there’s no respect issues there, that are happy to collaborate. So I’ve never felt that in my own line of work, but it’s certainly there. I think it’s something that I definitely will, as I go on to make bigger stuff—knock on wood—it’s something I’m sure I will encounter. And that is definitely the case in the film industry, but it’s the case in a lot of industries, also. And part of it, I think, is that people like to work with people like them. And they trust people like them. And when the people that are in power..

Are a bunch of old white dudes…

KS: Yeah. They trust other white dudes. And I don’t think that those people are necessarily bad guys, but they’re more inclined to work with people that remind them of them. And historically, that’s been the case. There’re exceptions to the rule, but I think the amount of women that are coming in and making stuff is rising, and I hope that continues.

So speaking of white dudes, your husband Joe—it’s no secret, that he’s the prince of Mumblecore. Have you sought his guidance on projects, or do you like to leave a distance so that you can really do your own thing?

KS: Yeah, we’ve been working separately for a longtime. We’re both directors, so we bump heads a lot when we try and work together, although we do have a home and raise a family together. We do that very well, but we have a hard time directing together and so we give each other a lot of autonomy to do our own thing. And definitely I ask his opinion all the time, and he asks my opinion all the time, seeing as how we love and trust each other and respect each other artistically, and we happen to be in the same industry, is really nice. Certainly I sent him a draft of the script and asked for his feedback, and he watched a cut of the film when it was finished, but he wasn’t part of the production process; and some of the suggestions I took, and some of them I didn’t take. And that goes the same the other way.

Have you ever discussed, perhaps, collaborating together?

KS: I think we’re pretty against it as a couple. He just wrote a script, and he wrote a little part for me to act in it, so we’ll do that. He acted in my second feature. We’ll do that, but we’re very clear about the roles there, and so, no, I don’t think we’ll work together as co-directors or anything like that.

In a couple of Joe’s films, your child has been a fairly prominent figure. Is that something that you were always on-board with, or did you take some winning over to put in play a young star?

KS: No, it’s easy, and it’s been really fun for him and convenient for us. When you have a movie with a kid in it, it’s a lot easier with your kid. We happen to have a four-year-old. Certainly when Joe wrote Happy Christmas or came up with the idea, he wasn’t considering any other kid. The reason why the kid is two in the movie is because we had a two-year-old at the time. Definitely it’s something we’re keeping in the family; we’re definitely not shopping him out. He doesn’t have an agent; we’re not looking for him to be in any other projects. For now, it’s fun.

It’s a nice little time capsule, right? It’s like a different version of a home video.

KS: Yeah, so I think it’ll be fun.

In an interview with the L.A. Times, you said that though it wasn’t your first feature, it felt like your first. Can you explain why?

KS: It’s because my other two features were so small. They were paid with credit cards, like really small. And this one was so much bigger budget; it had a full, proper crew. I was working with established actors. I hadn’t done anything of this level before, and it really did feel like my first time doing that. So that’s why.

And how have you gauged reception since its premiere?

KS: It’s been awesome. The reception’s been great. The reviews have been really positive. People that see the movie really love it with a passion, and that’s been amazing. So I just hope more people will watch it once it comes out.

Obviously, baby on the way, so that’s probably your chief preoccupation, but what projects are you cooking up next?

KS: I’m working on reading other material to see about directing somebody else’s stuff, but also trying to write my own script. So this happened really fast. We just finished wrapping the movie in October, and didn’t finish editing or anything til January. So I’ve been nonstop, so of course now I’m promoting the movie, etc. So I’ve got this baby coming up, and then I’ll be off working on a new project soon, I’m sure.

Do you ever consider putting yourself into your movies?

KS: I don’t think I’m a very good actress. My husband keeps trying to put me in things, and I’ll do it. But no, it’s easier for me to gauge how someone’s doing when it’s not me. So, I’d rather direct.

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