Tilda Swinton, like most women, must have seen Rosemary’s Baby at some point.
It could be this film that is the genesis of all fears of spawning evil, but once you see it, it does become a pretty scary thought that the human being living adjacent to your pelvis could be wrong, scary or evil and you’d have to love it anyway. Swinton has been working on a new film, We Need to Talk About Kevin , about a woman who mulls over having a child later in life only to give birth to an eventual spree killer. So essentially, every mother’s nightmare.
Swinton said that she was familiar with the feelings of what-if, having been pregnant herself at some point in her life. The actress said :
“Everybody thinks for one moment when they’re pregnant that they’re actually carrying the spawn of the devil… you’re in freefall, so you have to wonder. It would be crazy not to.”
Swinton adds:
“It’s everybody’s nightmare that, when they’re pregnant, they’re going to give birth to the devil. That when they bring up children, especially a boy, they’re going to give birth to this violence.”
Swinton even claims she had violent thoughts about her baby brother as a young girl, and says:
“I was going to kill him because he was a boy, naturally, and I already had two brothers, and that was just too much to bear… I hadn’t thought it through, but I was willing to wing it. And I noticed he had a ribbon from a baby bonnet sticking from the corner of his mouth. I started to pull it out – and then was witnessed in this great act of love, of nurture.”
The film was released late last month in Europe, and also stars John C. Reilly. It’s slated to release to further screens on October 21st.
