Much like a certain New Jersey transplant in a beloved Judy Blume book, Kelly Fremon Craig was a late bloomer. “I didn’t really need a bra till I was 14,” the filmmaker says. “I didn’t have my period till then, and I was distraught about it…. At the time, my mom was really into New Age visualization. She’d be like, ‘If you want something, you have to imagine that it is so.’ And so I would literally lie in bed at night and be like, ‘My boobs are growing bigger every day.’ I would imagine them just like, popping out of my chest—sprouting, like time-lapse photography.”

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It’s no wonder that decades later, Blume—who had for years spurned anyone trying to adapt her 1970 coming-of-age bestseller Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret—agreed to let Craig take a crack at the book. Her adaptation, out Friday, is a triumph, retaining the book’s down-to-earth urgency while bulking it up in a few crucial ways: namely, by expanding the role of Margaret’s mother, Barbara, played onscreen by a winning Rachel McAdams. 

As a girl, Craig had, of course, related to Margaret (played in the film by Abby Ryder Fortson). And now as a working mother herself, Barb’s predicament hits close to home. Margaret opens with the title character’s family moving from New York to the suburbs, where Barb decides to put her career aside and become the perfect PTA mom. Craig did something similar after being separated from her young son during the production of her first film, 2016’s The Edge of Seventeen. “By the time I got home, I said, ‘I’m not gonna work for a while. I’m just gonna do all the mom things,’” she says. “I’m going to set the playdates and volunteer at the preschool and do all the things, and blah, blah, blah. And by the second or third month of that, I was miserable.”

Craig spoke with Little Gold Men about all things Margaret: casting Fortson, directing the film’s most vulnerable scenes, and—the dream!—having lunch at Judy Blume’s house. Listen to the episode above, and find a partial transcript below. 

Vanity Fair: Do you have memories of reading Margaret as an adolescent?

Kelly Fremon Craig: Oh, yeah. I remember exactly the moment when my friend told me about the book: “and they do this exercise. And it makes your chest grow.” And she showed me how to do it. Then I went and got the book the next day. I really was on a Judy Blume binge around that age. Forever—have you read that one?

Oh, my God. I spent sixth grade reading all the dirty parts out loud to my friends.

Exactly. That’s so funny, you read it in sixth grade. So did I. And I remember, right off I knew like, oh, I'm way too young to read this. I was like, “I'm gonna shut the door and read it fast as I can absorb all of it.”

Ralph!

Ralph is like… I will never forget Ralph. I will never hear the name Ralph and not laugh.

Until fairly recently, Judy said she didn’t want her books being adapted. You can kind of see why: they're sort of episodic, there isn't a ton of plot. It's more about feelings. Is that why you think she initially didn't think Margaret would make a good movie?

I think the book just meant so much to her and it meant so much to so many people. She was afraid of it being screwed up, you know? Of it being cheesy, and also of it being Disney-fied—made into something really glossy and poppy, and very opposite from what she's known for, which is just those very honest details and characters who are flawed and confused. The way I understand it, she was worried that somebody would stand all the edges off.

When it came to actually write the screenplay, what was the first scene you wrote?

This was a tough script to start, mostly because you're adapting something that's so beloved and people have so many feelings about. It's just a tremendous amount of pressure, and I think that sort of self-consciousness is the enemy of creativity. The first couple of weeks of writing, I felt like I was just kind of a nervous wreck at the keyboard. At some point I just had to shoo everybody out of the room, all these imaginary people I had in my head.

And also I think an adaptation, it requires you to make certain changes to make it work for the medium. An adaptation that's too literal can wind up betraying the book, you know? So it really came down to, how do I deliver the spirit of the book, the soul of the book? How do we make the movie make you feel that way too? If we've done that, then I think we've succeeded.

It's one thing to read a character saying “we must increase our bust” or demanding a bra, but it's another having to direct an actual child to do these things. How do you find the right balance when you're directing scenes of, you know, adolescent humiliation—make them feel comfortable and safe while you’re doing it?

I love to have the kids do a lot of improvising. So actually, a lot of what's in the film is improvised. A lot of times I will sit down and start to rehearse a scene and I'll say, okay, but when we roll, you can't say any of the words that are actually in the script. So you gotta say it in your own words. And there's something about that just forces a freshness. It forces them to be in the moment and really listen to their partner, because they fall back into the memorization. 

So for instance, when the girls are looking at the anatomy book and the drawing of the penis for the first time, I actually filmed them seeing it for the first time. I just said, look, just react however you would react. Gretchen's line where she says it looks like a thumb, that's her honest reaction. Everything they say pretty much is just off the top of their heads and just real, you know, 11 and 12 year old girls reacting to this drawing. 

When one of the girls says that having a period kind of smells like the monkey bars—where did that line come from? Did one of the girls say it?

Oh, my God. No. So one of the things that I love about Judy Blumes is, I feel like she says the unsayable, you know? She says the embarrassing bits. And so when I was writing that scene, I thought that would be an interesting detail to have them mention. And then I started to think, what does it smell like? At that age, what would you compare it to? I was like, it's kind of metallic and earthy. And then the monkey bars came out of that.

One of the nice things about this book, and Judy Blume more broadly, is that it doesn't have a neat bow at the end or anything. As it ends, Margaret is still searching. She still doesn't really know what religion she feels like she belongs to, or if she even thinks religion is for her. Was it important for you to keep that feeling in the movie as well?

Honestly, her spiritual journey is very much the reason I wanted to make the film in the first place. I found it so profound when I went back and read the book. I was really struck and moved by the fact that she carves out her own sense of spirituality. It's not something she can find in organized religion, but she feels a connection to something that she can't quite name. You know that she's going to continue on her own journey. I feel like I'm still in that search. That never goes away for me.

Learning to be okay with uncertainty is the ultimate message of Margaret.

I think in a lot of ways, that is adulthood. Growing up is learning how to be okay with not knowing. As a kid, you sort of feel like your parents are God, and whatever they say you believe, and it feels very safe. And then at some point you realize, oh no, they don't know anything either. There was something about that that just struck me as really resonating.

I know that there are a lot of other books of hers that are in various stages of development. Is there another Judy Blume book that you would want to adapt? 

I feel like I'm so inside this one—I haven't even given it any thought. And also, everyone else in the world is scooping up all different titles, so I'm so glad that she's having this resurgence. I hope that means that this youngest generation gets to have Judy Blume in their lives. I feel like nobody should go through adolescence without Judy Blume.

Definitely not. So soon, Ralph will have his day on the big screen.

Oh, my God. I can’t wait.

This interview has been edited and condensed.