Zelda Williams is speaking up about her directorial debut for Lisa Frankenstein and how it felt directing a script by writer and film producer Diablo Cody, PEOPLE reported first.
“I think that was the thing that scared me most is, as far as tone goes,” Zelda tells PEOPLE. “Starting with a campy comedy can be really daunting. But I’m very grateful. We had such a good time.”
The actress feels like it was fate that made it her directorial debut.
“The pandemic happened, and other movies I was set to do just didn’t survive,” Zelda says. “Weirdly, this was the strange little train that did, and I’m very grateful for that.”
Cody, who wrote Lisa Frankenstein, told PEOPLE in a recent interview that “Zelda is a really captivating person because she is so intelligent, she’s so literate in film and she’s so direct and confident in a way that directors need to be. And I could see that in her.”
She added, “The very first time we met, I thought to myself, ‘I can’t believe this person has never directed a feature before, because I feel like I’m meeting someone who’s 10 films in.’ It was that confidence that drew me to her and also just that she had such an innate understanding of the source material.”
Lisa Frankenstein, set in 1989, depicts a high schooler (Newton) who revives an unexpectedly attractive Victorian corpse (Sprouse) during a storm and molds him into her perfect man.
Written by Diablo Cody, the movie will also feature Liza Soberano, Henry Eikenberry, Joe Chrest, and Carla Gugino.
