Self-Love, Actually

Amy Schumer turns the body-swap movie – and the romcom – on its head in I Feel Pretty, a high-concept comedy aiming to flip conventions both on and off-screen. Total Film meets the star and filmmakers to talk self-confidence, internet backlashes and inclusion riders.

- Helen Whitaker

It’s so much more about herself than, ‘Oh good, a guy came and saved me,’” says Amy Schumer of the high concept behind her latest big-screen comedy. There can be few conceits that feel quite so 2018 as a self-love journey precipitated by a head injury sustained in a SoulCycle class, and set to a Rihanna soundtrack, but thoroughly modern is what I Feel Pretty is reaching for. Written by romcom script veterans Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein, who here make their directorial debut, this is their twist on ‘magic movies’ such as Big – and on the romcom genre as a whole.

Schumer plays Renee, a thirtysomething with self-esteem issues. She constantly compares her looks to others, and dreams of a new job, but doesn’t have the chutzpah to do anything about it. Instead, she spends her days as an online minion in the basement office of Lily LeClair, an Estée Lauder-esque cosmetics company, and reads about the life of the woman who runs it, the granddaughter of its original founder, who occupies a Kardashian-level space in the celebrity hierarchy.

Then comes the wince-inducing SoulCycle accident, when a bang on the head knocks Renee unconscious and, when she comes around, the person she sees in the mirror is capable, confident and HOT. But unlike the movies to which this body-swap moment pays homage, when Renee comes around she doesn’t actually look any different. She just thinks she does.

It was the scene in which Renee ‘reveals’ her stunning new self to her friends that sold Amy Schumer. “I was laughing just imagining it,” says the Trainwreck star on the phone from New York, as her dog Tati yaps in the background. “That exorbitant amount of confidence has always made me laugh, so I was really into it.”