The selective star returns for the long-awaited, totally adorable adaptation ofAre You There God?
Its Me, Margaret.
Are You There God?
We must, we must, we must increase our bust!
goes its most famous line.
Its a lifelong affliction.
I felt like a milking machine, McAdams says.
Shed given birth to her daughter just five months before filming started and was pumping between shots.
Then the costume designer threw her a curveball.
Why dont we just try this without a bra?
McAdams, who plays Margarets mother, Barb, recalls her asking.
The great irony is Margaret just cant wait to get into a bra.
It also marks the comet-like return of a star whose engagement with the public is sporadic and exciting.
Girls.magazine in a breast pump, a bondage-style Fleur du Mal bra, and Versace jacket.
For Bustles photo shoot, she requested the images be edited as minimally as possible.
With this shoot, Im wearing latex underwear.
But Ive had two children.
McAdams is quick to laugh, and when she does, her whole face moves.
She does not look like a product of the industrys dermatological regimen; she looks like herself.
All my bikes have baby seats, she says.
One gets the sense that her years not working have kept her in close touch with normalcy.
The breaks from acting, she says, really helped me feel empowered.
It helped me feel like I was taking back some control.
And I think it sort of allowed me to come in from a different doorway.
McAdams learned howto walk away at a young age.
Growing up in small-town Ontario, she started figure skating at the age of 4.
Around the time she hit her pre-teen years, it was clear she had real promise.
She could do a single axel that was a big deal and had started branching out to pair skating.
The rink was a weird place to go through puberty.
I remember there was an older guy who would do all the dance tests with the younger girls.
We were all madly in love with him, and he was probably gay, she says.
Like Margarets greatest fear, she was a late bloomer.
I remember being very disappointed by my first bra.
The boys just seemed relentless.
I wanted to be with my friends and do it for fun.
There can be moments when you do things that you might not be ready for.
You take a job that isnt exactly right for you because youre feeling those external pressures.
It didnt take long for acting to work out for McAdams.
It did feel a little overnight, McAdams concedes.
McAdams has these interactions often, as the interest in her early career films has never waned.
Especially asMean Girlsenters production on its third iteration: a big screen adaptation of the movies musical treatment.
(I dont see a way to shoehorn us in, she says.
But if Tina [Fey] can figure it out, Im there, for sure.)
You dont go to theater school to learn about how to deal with that.
Theres no book on how to navigatethat.
Because of McAdams firm boundaries, she is sometimes talked about in terms of what she did not do.
Like when she was not onthe 2006Vanity Faircoveralongside Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, shot by Annie Leibovitz.
Ultimately, she walked off set.
Instead, she spent her time biking around Toronto, spending time with her family, and recentering.
Today, McAdams admits, Theres certainly things like I wish Id done that.
But the success of those projects, she says, makes her think twice about her potential casting.
I step back and go, That was the right person for that.
But I also knew it wasn’t quite jiving with my personality and what I needed to stay sane.
Not that she would have articulated it that way at the time.
Its taken years to understand what I intuitively was doing.
On her wayto lunch, McAdams stopped into the bookstoreMargarets author, Judy Blume, owns in town.
She bought her kids the picture bookGood Night Florida Keys,along with two copies ofMargaretfor Blume to sign.
Small details like these are all shes willing to share about her personal life.
Then she would go into this setting where she was parenting a pre-teen daughter.
Its funny to live that life and also be looking into your future.
That was me then, too, Blume says.
Fifty years later, that tension was still top of mind for Fremon Craig and McAdams.
They also grappled with how much of Barbs sexuality to portray.
Judy was like, I think Barbs a really sexy mom, McAdams recalls.
Kelly was like, Shes dorky.
I’m like, Whats dorky-sexy?
Where do we find the middle?
Shes sashaying up there saying, Well, hello.
Its actually that ease that does make her sexier, her just being a hundred percent herself.
Not that McAdams always felt at ease while portraying Barb.
Especially when it came to her bust.
I was worried some days.
Is this too much?
she says.I hated thinking about that.
Why do I even care?
But its hard not to!