Snail Mail on I Saw the TV Glow and Auditioning for the Doomed Madonna Biopic
The musician on what got cut from I Saw the TV Glow, drinking luna juice, and the “audition Olympics” required to become Madonna.
Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is a coming-of-age horror flick that follows Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) as they escape into the world of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque series called The Pink Opaque. The show is centered on a pair of teen girls, Isabel (Helena Howard) and Tara (Lindsey Jordan), who use their psychic connection to battle supernatural monsters and a Big Bad named Mr. Melancholy, who regularly tries to trap the pair in the ominous-sounding Midnight Realm.
As the movie unfurls, Owen and Maddy communicate through shared VHS tapes of The Pink Opaque, which technically airs on a young-adult channel but is described as way too scary and lore heavy for most kids. While the shy, hesitant Isabel is a parallel to Owen, Maddy sees herself as the confident Tara, however wishfully. “She’s superhot and she doesn’t take shit from anybody,” Maddy tells Owen. “Plus, she’s an expert on demonology.” I Saw the TV Glow is Jordan’s acting debut — perhaps you’re familiar with the emotionally acute indie rock she makes as Snail Mail. An art-house horror buff, Jordan was a big fan of Schoenbrun’s 2021 breakthrough, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, and told Vulture that learning about I Saw the TV Glow “felt like a dream.” “I had casually said to my manager that it would be cool to start acting. I’m a huge movie nerd; I could see that being really fun,” she explained. “He didn’t do anything, but the next week, I got two emails about auditioning for things. The rest is history.”
The other film that you auditioned for was the doomed Madonna biopic. What was that process like?
I don’t know shit, but it was the audition Olympics. I had to watch her tour doc, which was dope, and there were specific interviews that I had to emulate. I guess I was being considered for the “Like a Virgin” part of her career, so they gave me a music video from that time and asked me to make my own four-minute dance sequence. That was what really kicked my ass; I don’t dance. There were like 400 takes in my Dropbox.
You’ve been in front of a camera many times, but this is your acting debut. What were you nervous about?
I was nervous during the entire process. The first day on set was chill because it was just costuming, and then it got scary the next day when I had to read. They showed me the blocking and said they would call me down in a few hours. I was just pacing in a classroom inside the high school where we were shooting, psyching myself out. There were a lot of street casters involved with the project anyway, so they weren’t like, Why do you not know exactly what to do? They were super-gentle with me; it was a kind environment and everybody was really patient.
You get to deliver one of the film’s silliest lines, “Hey, Bozo, Estée Lauder called,” before presumably slaughtering a clown offscreen. How many takes did that take?
Three? That was the first scene I shot! There was all this axe choreography that didn’t make the final cut, probably because I couldn’t do it. It was a lot to think about in one moment and it’s a good line; I want to do justice to it.
Tara’s style is pretty cool; what were the conversations about that like?
There was talk of cutting my hair to look like Brigette Lundy-Paine, but I had been growing out a haircut that I really didn’t like for a year, so I was kind of hoping that we wouldn’t. Luckily, the hairstylist decided to slick it back. A good amount of the costume options looked like what I wear anyway. There’s an implication that Tara’s probably a lesbian — I got typecast for sure. I have a tattoo of A Trip to the Moon, which the villain in the movie is drawn after, and a Smashing Pumpkins tattoo — Snail Mail also ended up doing a Smashing Pumpkins cover of “Tonight, Tonight” for the soundtrack, which was something we had coincidentally already been working on for the tour. It was very serendipitous.
Did Jane give you any homework in preparation for the role?
There were a lot of direct pointers about personalizing and adding weight to the lines. I bugged Jane a lot about the script; I read it, like, four times before I really understood what it was about. I spent a lot of time trying to dissect it, and Jane was not trying to give me answers; they were like, “Figure it out and then I will confirm or deny.” Once you get to the crux of what the movie is about, it all makes a lot of sense. It’s just heavy as hell and you could kind of feel it on the set; it was a heavy operation.
Your character is named Tara in tribute to Buffy’s tragic lesbian witch. Have you watched Buffy?
My girlfriend is obsessed with Buffy and they suggested that we watch it after seeing the script. We watched around five episodes and planned to finish it together, so I haven’t watched any without them. I thought it was cool; I was pretty wrapped up in that season-one thing about the Hellmouth opening. I never got to see what happened when it opened, so I should probably get back in there and watch some Buffy.
There’s a scene that teases some of the The Pink Opaque plotlines, like “Episode 209: Physical Fitness Test of Death.” Were you and Helena Howard involved at all in exploring a backstory for your characters? What’s Tara’s life like when she’s not on the psychic plane?
We didn’t really get into the episode guide, although we shot stills for a bunch of the episodes. I’m hoping that A24 sells that Pink Opaque book. I don’t know if there would be enough photos of us to actually fill it up, but Helena and I did take a lot of buddy photos; they had us posed everywhere for the episode guide. You see the cover when you watch the movie. That A24 web store is pretty popping …
What does luna juice taste like?
It was really nasty; the consistency was thicklike papier-mâché. Maybe they colored it with blue Gatorade? That was the last thing I shot, and I was in the ground during that scene, so there were bugs crawling all over me.
The outcasts in I Saw the TV Glow find refuge in The Pink Opaque. Was there any media that you watched in your youth that helped you discover your own identity?
I found the DIY and punk world on the internet when I was a teenager. Tumblr was a huge part of me understanding my sexuality. I was 14 years old and massively obsessed with Grimes’s Tumblr where she talked about identity politics and stuff. I’m grateful that I had Tumblr during that time, because I didn’t know any gay people. I was raised religious enough that I was extremely self-hating, so seeing other people connecting online and making jokes about being gay helped me be like, Oh, we’re proud?!
Can you relate to the idea of fandom that spills over into obsession?
Totally. I was the biggest fangirl in high school and middle school. Being a stan was my shit, and pretty much all my friends were like that too. I’ve noticed that a lot of people who work in the music industry, like new A&R people, are fangirls who I used to see on Tumblr. I have to set boundaries with Snail Mail stuff. There’s that whole thing where fans make fun of the person they look up to — sometimes they lovingly point out horrible things about me that I’ve never thought about and it scars me for real. I don’t make jokes like that with my friends, but maybe it’s appropriate if you’ve known the person for ten years. It just looks like bullying.
What’s next for Snail Mail?
We’re touring with Waxahatchee and Tim Heidecker in September. I’ve been working on a record by myself, although I know who I want to make it with. I have the shells of most of the songs. I’m taking my time in classic Snail Mail style. For me, songwriting requires rest and time to reflect, and I’m only just starting to have off time. The ideas are blooming so much better now, and I feel like I’m really diving in. I think the songs are bangers.