Interview: Bo Burnham and the Stars of “Eighth Grade”

“Eighth Grade” is a film so viscerally authentic about the agonies of middle school that it all but dissolves the distance between the film and the audience, making us feel as though we are 14 years old trying to find someone to sit with in the lunchroom. In an interview, writer/director Bo Burnham and the film’s stars, Elsie Fisher, who plays Kayla, and Emily Robinson, who plays an older girl named Olivia talked about making them feel comfortable playing characters who are very uncomfortable and how social media as intensified some of the anxiety of adolescence. Burnham, who has been very open about his own struggles with anxiety (and who is still less than a decade from his own years as a teen) talked about what he learned from watching teenagers talk about their lives on YouTube.

Bo, why did you choose to make a girl the main character? Is it because boys are even more clueless at that age?

BB: Yes, they’re less self-aware probably or maybe they’re more self-aware but it just doesn’t make it out of their mouths. They can’t really process things. They just don’t run as deep at that age certainly. I don’t know, I didn’t really even like start understanding myself until I was 16 or 15. When I was in 8th grade I was just like hammy and a loser and had no self-awareness and all of a sudden the lights turned on and I was like…