This hilarious millennial-comedy is the feature directorial debut from Leah McKendrick, which she also wrote and stars alongside an ensemble cast including Ego Nwodim (SNL), Andrew Santino (Dave), Clancy Brown (Shawshank Redemption, John Wick 4), Adam Rodriguez (Magic Mike, Criminal Minds) and Yvonne Strahovski (Handmaid’s Tale).
The film centers around thirty-something Nellie Robinson who is your quintessential eternal bridesmaid. Her weekends are spent hopping from wedding to baby shower to yet another she-said-yes engagement party, all while nursing a broken heart due to a recent breakup. Nellie distracts herself in the shallow dating pool of bartenders and Hinge bros, but when a doctor visit reveals her fertility may be in jeopardy, she stares down the barrel of a future without options and decides to freeze her eggs. The arduous (and pricey) process sends her on a journey of self-examination, confronting past lovers, dreams and regrets, and ultimately bringing her face to face with the one she’s meant to be with forever: Herself.
‘Scrambled’ is based on Leah’s real journey through egg freezing and 30-something singledom.
Credit: LionsgateIn 2021, single at 34, heartbroken and isolated in a pandemic, I decided to freeze my eggs. Itwas a lonely ride—an existential one (EGGSistential?) Harvesting my eggs meant confrontingmy own mortality. It meant struggling to flick air bubbles out of syringes then googling “can airbubbleskill me,” filling out paperwork with a box checked: If you drop dead, should your eggsbe tossed, donated to science or left to your little sister? Post-injection every night I would play afun game I liked to call: Am I lightheaded or are my organs shutting down?’ McKendrick shared.
“I was also forced to reckon with something scarier than death itself: The ideals of womanhood.As a woman, you are expected to be eternally youthful, fertile and untapped, yet sexually available-but only with your person. But what if you don’thave a person? Why don’t you havea person? Find your person, but DON’T SETTLE. “The most important career choice you’ll make is who you choose to marry” #LeanIn! Except your career won’t keep you warm at night.Take your time, when they’re the one, you’ll FEEL it. Oops, you’re out of time! THE FUCK have you been doing? Love is a CHOICE not a feeling! Now you’re old-balls, everyone is taken, you blew your baby-making years. Why are you so obsessed with babies-is this“TheHandmaid’s Tale?”You call yourself a feminist?!”
Credit: Lionsgate“As I stood alone in my apartment injecting my belly with hormones I mixed myself, I thought,where is the movie about this? The loneliness/confusion/freedom/panic of being a single and childless woman in her mid-30s. I thought I was living a full, colorful existence of dream-chasing, I’d never settled for anyone else’s life—WHY did I feel like an epic FAILURE?
Because by society’s suffocating standards, I’d failed. FAILED to retain my youth, to attract the right mate within the given timeframe, to secure the kind of grown-up health insurance that could cover my (apparently geriatric) needs. I’d failed and now it was time to pay the price. Literally.
I was suddenly determined to live to tell the (cautionary) tale. My goal with SCRAMBLED was to make the movie that I desperately needed while bloated and self-loathing on my couch.Thanks to SX I knew if I could muster the ovaries and stamina to build it…they would come. This time I would wear all the hats-write/direct/star-nurture my film from conception to delivery. I began writing as I was injecting. Meditating on my real egg-freezing journey, my real family, friends, exes, lost condoms, heartbreaks and rejections.
I set out to make an irreverent comedy, but what resulted was a love letter. A tribute to all the ladies doing their best to take care of themselves, by themselves: Their bodies, their spirits, their futures. SCRAMBLED allowed me to take what felt like punishment and reframe it as an act of self-love—an investment in a future of my own choosing, chosen at my own pace.”
‘Scrambled’ celebrated its world premiere at SXSW this past weekend.
