Eva Victor’s Secret Is Out

For Eva Victor, 2025 has felt simultaneously “800 years long” as well as only “four minutes.” In January, they premiered their directorial debut, Sorry, Baby, at Sundance. (The film, which was produced by Barry Jenkins’ Pastel production company, sold to A24 for a reported $8 million during the festival.) From there, Victor attended their first Paris Fashion Week, showed the film at Cannes, and traveled to New York to make their late-night debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — only to continue ping-ponging between the East and West Coasts for an onslaught of near-constant press obligations surrounding Sorry, Baby’s June theatrical release. The pinging and ponging is ongoing.

“My mind is a wrung-out towel. Since Sundance, I’ve watched the film probably seven times. I have been asked how this story came to me 9 million times, and every time I’m asked I take a pause and pretend to think for a minute before answering, as if I haven’t answered it 9 million times before,” the 31-year-old filmmaker tells me over text from yet another flight. “It’s 7:20 a.m. and I’m at JFK airport after being in NYC for 25 hours. I will be back at JFK airport Saturday for a couple days again. But I love that people are finding the film. So it’s worth it. It’s worth it all!!!”

When we first met, it was during a (very relative) respite for Victor. Sure, there were auditions to tape, fittings to attend, and interviews like this one to complete. Yet as we settled in for crispy rice bowls in the outdoor gazebo of Los Feliz’s All Time, they were feeling relaxed in the way that can only come from watching a ton of reality television and a surplus of high-end skin care products. “I was really behind on Love Island so I caught up. I’m getting a lot of facials and going to Pilates. You can do this pose that feels really good on the hips. You’ve got your legs out and you’re just totally open down there,” Victor says, contorting their body into a version of “happy baby.” It’s not just the air mileage that had left Victor so drained. Sorry, Baby — which they wrote, directed, and starred in — follows a brilliant literature professor at a liberal arts college who’s stagnating in the wake of a personal trauma. It also happens to be semi-autobigraphical. “My plan is to never watch it again. Or maybe in 20 years.”

Below, Victor reflects on their queer journey, discovering Giovanni’s Room, and the life-changing magic of wearing Loewe.

Between Sundance, the theatrical release promotion, and gearing up for an awards season run, I know you’ve had next to no time for yourself. But I have to ask… have you carved out any time to think about what, if anything, you might want to write and direct next?

I’m finding a lot of joy in getting back to the privacy of writing because it’s so public to share your film and it’s so exposing. I had this secret thing I was obsessed with and now the secret is out, and I need a little secret again. I feel like there are questions about the world that keep me up at night, and I don’t always know how they will make their way into something. But they find a way to present themselves in story form if I’m being kept up by them.

Maybe I just have the Wuthering Heights trailer on my mind, but I’d love to see you adapt a piece of classic literature.

I feel like a film really can be adapted from a short story because that’s actually how much you can cover in a film. I think about Certain Women, which was adapted from Maile Meloy’s short stories. I think about Moonlight and how it was adapted from a one-act play. It’s very daunting to adapt a sweeping novel.

Is there a short story you’d ever consider?

There’s a Clarice Lispector story that a friend showed me that made me feel completely seen and devastated and gleefully vengeful. I won’t name the story though…

What were the short stories, novels, and other works you were reading while writing Sorry, Baby?

There was this free, online Yale English class about the great American novel that I found because I was really wanting to read Lolita. I was like, “I don’t think I can make this film about someone in grad school for literature without having read Lolita.” So I read it and felt really moved by the fact that it was such an upsetting novel that at the same time is such a compelling read. It brought up questions about form and content and how those work together. It felt like the kind of thing that Agnes would be teaching, but also would be deeply interested in, because it’s a book about someone who cannot for the life of them see the interiority of someone so he just objectifies her and abuses her the whole time.

The most excellent book I’ve ever read is Giovanni’s Room. It came into my life at a time when I was on a bit of a queer journey, and discovering James Baldwin’s queerness through that novel was really meaningful to me and made me understand what I was experiencing as a part of this big world. So it was a real joy to give Lydie’s character this queer life, and I gave her that [book to read] just to have the same, honestly, horny moment. To The Lighthouse is in the film as well, and I really loved that book. It felt like the kind of book a professor would use to prove he’s a good guy.

One aspect of this film that really resonated with me is the grief that comes from Agnes and Lydie going down these very different life paths. Agnes is having a ton of career success while Lydie has found her life partner and had a baby. Something I’ve thought a lot about, in my own life, is that you’re “allowed” to be outwardly excited about successfully settling down and having kids. But if you’re killing it in your job, you have to be modest about it so you don’t sound braggy.

I agree that we have really weird rules about what’s allowed to be “perfect” in our lives. We seriously have one life path that we are told exists, and when you follow it, everyone is supposed to clap. It’s really intense and I feel like it’s really, really straight. It’s a classic “boy, girl, get married, have a baby.” And seriously, shout out — that’s really epic. But it is not a world that has ever felt like a road that I understand, and from the outside, it does seem like a bit of a prison.

My straight friends are seriously all married and a lot of them have babies. My queer friends, like, are not on the same kind of timeline. There is an eternal youth to queerness, honestly. Especially transness. All my friends who are trans are actually defying age and thus defying societal rules that are really intense and remind you of age.

You do seem to have this really cool cohort of queer friends in the arts, including former Saturday Night Live writer Celeste Yim, musician Lucy Dacus, and I Saw the TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun. Have they been a real-life raft?

I feel like the universe has sent me on the path to show me the people I need to learn from. Most of those people are trans and most of them are queer. When I started [acting on] the show Billions, I immediately met Asia Kate Dillon, and they were totally instrumental in me learning about how my queerness wanted to be. Then I got to go shadow Jane on set [for I Saw the TV], and then they put me in Lucy’s music video. There is this thread of “You find people you need to be that mirror to you.” That’s been, like, life-saving, honestly.

Throughout your press tour, you’ve continuously subverted expectations surrounding gender and sexuality through fashion. What’s it been like working with celebrity stylist Danielle Goldberg on that over the past few months?

I had been a true fan of what Danielle had Ayo [Edebiri] and Greta [Lee] wearing. They both look so hot, chic, and just effortless. I was desperate to meet with her, so my amazing PR person set us up, and we got breakfast at 8 a.m. before I had to get on a plane. At the very end of the meeting, she was like, “This is good. I think we should do this.” I was like, “Same.”

The first thing we did together was Cannes, which was really intense. I think I had five looks including a gorgeous Loewe suit and a Loewe white ethereal dress. [Working with her] seriously changed how it felt to walk into a room. Like, I could be on the stage in front of hundreds and not want to die because I looked amazing. I never had that experience before.

The looks were truly that good!

It’s so funny to look that amazing and also be feeling really emotional. It’s a real Devil Wears Prada vibe.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.