PROFILE

Eva Victor

THE INTERNET SENSATION TURNED WRITER, ACTOR AND AUTEUR SPEAKS TO ALEXANDRA ENGLISH ABOUT WHAT IT’S LIKE WHEN YOUR MOST PRIVATE SELF IS WHAT PUTS YOU IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Eva Victor doesn’t do things by halves. In fact, given a project, they will more likely triple their efforts. As the writer, director and lead actor in their debut film, Sorry, Baby, which premiered to great acclaim at Sundance earlier this year, Victor has proven to be a triple-threat-to-watch.

Victor and I are speaking not long after Sorry, Baby’s Australian premiere at the Sydney Film Festival. There were so many people lining up outside the State Theatre that it was easy to assume there was more than one film showing. There was not. More than 1200 people filed into the hallowed art deco halls of the heritage-listed theatre, filling the room with the kind of arty-intellectual buzz that indicates this is a film worth seeing. When I describe the turn-out to Victor (who recently started using she/they pronouns interchangeably in recognition of how a person’s identity can shift from moment to moment), they’re blown away.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction is surprising news to the 31-year-old, who can’t believe so many people are resonating with their semi-autobiographical story. It’s bittersweet: on one hand, it’s amazing for a piece of work you’ve toiled over for years to be so well-received; on the other, given the film is about a Bad Thing that happens to Agnes (played by Victor) at the hands of her college professor, it’s also devastating. “It’s an interesting experience having people feel so connected to the film,” Victor says. “You can see it in some people’s faces and bodies that it means something to them. It’s a mix of both gratitude that people are there and that I don’t feel as lonely, but also sadness because obviously it’s a sad thing for someone to relate to.”

Victor has been writing Sorry, Baby in the back of their mind for years — more than half a decade at least. During the pandemic, they holed up at their cousin’s house in Maine on a self-imposed writer’s retreat and slowly and painstakingly pulled the story out of themselves between getting their car stuck in the snow and reheating cans of split pea soup. Now, Victor is reckoning with the fact that the most deeply personal thing to ever happen to them is showing on screens across the globe. “You spend so many years with it inside your head and you kind of pray that someday it might be something outside of you, but once it is, it’s like this weird thing of, ‘Oh, we did it, but now it’s not mine anymore,’” Victor says. “I’m not going to be there every time it’s shown, which is kind of a relief, but it happened so quickly. It’s bizarre.”