Broad City (TV Program)

The “Broad City” co-creator starred in and co-wrote a horror film about pregnancy. It’s being released just as she is becoming a mother.Ilana Glazer was trying without much success to think of movies devoted to the experience of conceiving and carrying a child.“There’s not a lot from the pregnant person’s point of view,” Glazer said. She pointed, for example, to “Knocked Up,” the 2007 comedy that starred Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl, but that was told “from the inseminator’s perspective,” she said.There was “Rosemary’s Baby,” the 1968 thriller adapted by Roman Polanski, which fit the narrative bill but was still difficult to endorse. As Glazer succinctly summarized: “Great movie — not a great guy.”And the 1987 comedy “Three Men and a Baby” definitely didn’t make the cut. “How many men do we need to tell about how this baby got here?” Glazer exclaimed.The topic was especially personal for Glazer, a creator and star of the Comedy Central series “Broad City.” She was 36 weeks pregnant during this phone conversation in late May and apologetic for the fact that she was eating while she spoke.“I’m stuffing my face,” she said. “I have no choice. I’ve got to be eating this pita and dip right now.”Glazer with Justin Theroux in a scene from the film.Anna Kooris/HuluThe subject of childbirth is also of particular interest to Glazer because she is the star and co-writer of a new film, “False Positive,” that casts her as a woman whose efforts to have a child draw her into a nightmarish spiral of uncertainty and deceit. The movie, which is directed and co-written by John Lee, made its debut last week at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released by Hulu on June 25.In reviews of the film, The Hollywood Reporter praised “False Positive” as a “juicy genre entry about how women’s reproductive systems are treated like coveted real estate,” and The Wrap called it a “smart, sharp shocker.”Glazer, 34, started working on “False Positive” long before she became pregnant, and while it is one of the most prominent projects she has appeared in since “Broad City” ended in 2019, it is by no means a comedy.It is an unapologetic work of body horror — one that begins with the image of Glazer’s character disoriented and awash in blood as she wanders the streets of New York. The provocations escalate from there.This onscreen version of Glazer is very different from the one audiences have grown accustomed to seeing — not happy-go-lucky, but frantic and fighting for her life — and writing and filming the movie tested her in ways that comedy had not entirely prepared her for.But Glazer said these efforts were necessary to tell a story about a modern childbirth process that she fears has become debased and commodified, particularly in the United States — fears she had held well before she became acquainted with it firsthand.“I’m really obsessed with how in-plain-sight evil the system that we live in is,” she said. “It’s absurd and it’s funny, even though it’s horrible, the way we are stripped of our humanity. Everyone is gaslit into thinking it is normal.”Glazer wanted to tell a story about the modern birth process and how it has become commodified: “Everyone is gaslit into thinking it is normal.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesGlazer and Lee started working together when Lee, a creator of subversive TV comedies like “Wonder Showzen” and “Xavier: Renegade Angel,” was hired to direct episodes of “Broad City” beginning with its first season in 2014.They bonded over a shared worldview and talked about their work outside the show, including an amorphous narrative piece that Lee was writing with the author and TV creator Alissa Nutting (“Made for Love”).Lee, who described that piece as a “tone poem,” said that it drew inspiration from tragic events in his life: his wife and frequent collaborator, Alyson Levy, had had a miscarriage and his father had died. More