Q&A with Kris Swanberg, Writer & Director of ‘Unexpected’
by Rebecca Schultz
When indie filmmaker Kris Swanberg went through her first pregnancy five years ago, she ached for something to watch that would help her cope with the surge of new emotions she was experiencing; what she found was Father of The Bride Pt. II and Knocked Up — comedies about pregnancy told from a man’s perspective. She kept this in mind when writing and directing Unexpected, a 2015 Sundance breakout co-written by Megan Mercier and starring How I Met Your Mother’s Cobie Smulders andWorkaholics’s Anders Holms.
Unexpected tells the story of Samantha Abbott (Smulders), a young teacher at a shuttering public high school in a low-income Chicago neighborhood, and Jasmine (newcomer Gail Bean), one of her most promising students, whose personal lives intersect in an unconventional way after learning of each other’s unexpected pregnancies. While Samantha, with the support of her live-in-boyfriend-turned-husband John (Holms), struggles with the idea of losing her career to motherhood, Jasmine is faced with a retreating boyfriend and the unexpected hardships of continuing education as a young mother.
While Unexpected isn’t Swanberg’s first feature (she also wrote and directed It Was Great, But I Was Ready to Come Home in 2009 and Empire Builder in 2012), its high production level and glowing reception at Sundance will certainly mark it is as a monumental step in her career. Curious about her experience not just as a mother, but as a former teacher on the west side of Chicago as well, I was able to catch Kris on the phone and hear about what she hopes a different kind of “pregnancy movie” — one that tells the story of two young women with very different experiences — will add to the dialogue.
To read the rest of the story, head on over to The Riveter Magazine.
