Kathryn Hahn: On Moms and Movies

At a swanky Beverly Hills hotel on a recent late Sunday afternoon, actress Kathryn Hahn sits down for her last interview of the day at the Captain Fantastic press junket. We’re set up for a conversation in a hotel room that must have doubled as the day’s makeshift production office because there are about a dozen monitors stacked in the room. But Hahn doesn’t mind the surroundings. She plops herself on one end of the couch, game for our chat about movies, motherhood and kids—especially in light of her roles in Captain Fantastic and the upcoming Bad Moms—and about how a chance meeting at an L.A. farmers market changed her life.

After what must have been a long press day, Hahn comes across as down-to-earth and funny, but proves she’s no pushover either, evidenced when production guys enter the room to start breaking down the equipment. After the first couple times (it’s distracting), Hahn dons the mom pants—and voice—to put the kibosh on the interruptions. “Sorry, I wanted to crack the whip for you,” she says, cognizant of the brief interview time. So we get back to the business at hand, discussing Hahn’s role as Harper in the family relationship drama Captain Fantastic. It’s a relatively small role, but Hahn says she wanted it badly. “When I first read this script, I was so moved by it, the story as a whole, that I really wanted in anywhere. I really, really wanted to be a part of it.”

Written and directed by Matt Ross and starring Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic focuses on a father who raises his six children off the grid in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Ben is a rigorous teacher who ensures that the kids are both intellectually and physically fit. When the family is forced to leave the wilds, the modern world challenges his idea of parenting. Ben’s sister Harper (Hahn) welcomes her brother and his family, but neither of them can fully understand the other’s life choices. Harper protects her kids by cushioning the truth in euphemisms, while Ben is direct to a fault. Captain Fantastic paints a complex picture of parenting; Ben is a fallible protagonist who believes he’s acting in the best interest of his kids, while Harper and her husband Dave are the flip side to the three-sided coin that is child-rearing.

“I have two kids. I’m a mom, and I know that feeling of wanting to hold on to their childhoods so tightly, knowing that the inevitable is going to happen,” she says.

“That’s such a bittersweet feeling,” she adds. “I also knew in talking with Matt, I really wanted this part. I just wanted to play with him and with Viggo. And I also knew that when I talked with him that Harper and Dave, played by Steve Zahn—who’s amazing and a doll—that they’d not be caricatures, that they’d not be the ‘comedy rest stop’ on this trip… that they’d be actually full, and deep, and offer a compelling argument and not just be a sounding board for [Ben’s] ideals.”

When it comes to her own approach with her kids, ages 6 and 9, Hahn freestyles it like most do. “I don’t even know what I would say my parenting style is,” she says. “It’s like a day-by-day: ‘Are you breathing?’ at the end of the day.”

“I remember as a new mother, feeling so overwhelmed by the societal expectations,” she says. “It was the blogs, Pinterest, Instagram, the advice… the perfection. Not only do you have to be a totally present mother but then you have to bake homemade stuff [for school], and it was just too, too much. So I’d always felt ‘less than’ and always felt like sweating. Or that I was trying to put something on… on top of something that my gut was telling me, ‘I don’t know, this is actually getting in the way of your connection with your kid.’”