Rose Byrne on the Lynchian winks of 'If I Had Legs I'd Kick You' - 48 hills

"Rose Byrne laughs when it is suggested that her new film If I Had Legs I'd Kick You is maybe even scarier than that horror, the-devil-is-in-the-child classic The Exorcist for its portrayal of a kid in a peril. In writer/director Mary Bronstein's vision, written in reaction to a family crisis of her own, it is an overwhelmed mother double-teaming with an intractable medical condition that has placed a little girl in such dire straits."

""It was so unpredictable a screenplay and also very funny," she continues. "I couldn't believe I was reading it and that this opportunity had come to me. It was an extraordinary thing to try to peel back the onion of this character. I was just obsessed with reverse engineering who this character was before. Everyone's going to respond differently to a crisis. That was a huge conversation Mary and I had of trying to figure that out.""

"Byrne, the Australian actor who earned two Emmy nominations for her work as an ethically compromised attorney in the legal thriller Damages and displayed her comic chops in the screwball comedy Bridesmaids, won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for her performance in If I Had Legs. A mother herself of two children with partner Bobby Cannavale, she plays Linda, a therapist with a young daughter tethered to a feeding tube, treatment for an unnamed eating disorder."

An overwhelmed mother struggles to care for a young daughter tethered to a feeding tube as the child fails to meet weight goals and faces escalating medical interventions. The mother, Linda, is a therapist whose professional judgment frays as she treats patients while coping with personal crisis. Interpersonal tensions mount with the child's caregivers and Linda's own therapist grows hostile. The screenplay blends existential, Lynchian imagery with unexpected humor while probing crisis responses, character backstory, and ethical ambiguity. Rose Byrne portrays Linda with award-winning intensity, navigating suspense, familial strain, and the emotional violence of medical uncertainty.

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