'If I Had Legs I’d Kick You' Director Knew Rose Byrne's Portrayal of a Mom Breaking Down Would Captivate Audiences: 'I Told You So'

In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Rose Byrne runs, screams, drinks wine, and contorts herself physically and metaphorically to portray a mother crushed under the weight of caring for her daughter. Mary Bronstein, who wrote and directed the film, says the actress gave her a “gift” with her performance.

The film, inspired by Bronstein’s experience of living in a motel in California so her 7-year-old daughter could access medical treatment across the country from their NYC home, earned Byrne a Golden Globe this month and, now, an Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category.

“When I wrote this, I had nobody in mind. I just wrote it with blank faces,” Bronstein told SheKnows ahead of Oscar nominations. “And then I realised when I finished writing it that, ‘Oh my God, I wrote this really big check that an actress has to cash now.’ Because the performance is the film and the film is the performance, by design.”

When it came to casting, Byrne quickly came to Bronstein’s mind. “I’ve seen her do everything an actor can do, comedy, horror, drama, stage work, big action movies, voiceovers in animated movies. She’s done everything. And one thing that she’s never done, that no one ever gave her the chance to do, is lead a movie like this.”

Bronstein had some specifics in mind. The film, which juggles elements of body horror and psychological drama, is also a comedy and required a lead who would recognize those comedic beats. “We needed to go on a shorthand,” says Bronstein. “You can’t teach that.”

“But I also needed somebody who has the dramatic chops to turn themselves inside out and hit the emotional arc of this film. Rose just checked all those boxes,” Bronstein says, citing Byrne’s show Physical as the work that piqued her interest in the actress.

“I saw her doing something that I hadn’t quite seen before, a darkness that I hadn’t quite seen before, and it wasn’t my movie and had nothing to do with my movie, but I knew I was going to make her do it further. I just knew.”

Pulled in numerous directions, Byrne’s character’s life feels like it’s crashing down around her. Her daughter won’t eat enough for doctors to remove her feeding tube, the patients at her therapy clinic need her help with unusual crises, her own therapist is growing increasingly weary of her, and no one, not a parking attendant or her daughter’s doctor or her own husband, is offering much support.

“I felt like I was giving her a gift and saying, ‘Here, this is yours. Do you want to do this with me?’ And then what ended up happening is that I was thinking of it wrong. It was really her giving me back the gift of the film. It’s quite extraordinary.”

For most of the film, the camera is inches from Byrne’s face. Her onscreen daughter is never shown. Her husband (Christian Slater) mainly exists as a voice through a phone, and supporting performances from Conan O’Brien and ASAP Rocky are fleeting in comparison to the time we spend with Linda. This is absolutely Byrne’s film, and Bronstein knew it would be.

“We had such a synergy and such a mutual trust,” she says. “It’s such a physical, all-out, no-holds-barred, raw performance, and I don’t want to be like, ‘I told you so,’ but I told you so.”