Filmmaker Zelda Williams on grief, camp comedy and embracing the unusual

Q22:11Zelda Williams: On grief, directing the camp comedy Lisa Frankenstein and embracing the unusual

Director Zelda Williams did not anticipate her debut feature film would be a campy '80s rom-com that explores the beauty in grief. But in a cinematic world where death isn't permanent and the main character is plucked straight out of a music video for the Cure, Williams seizes the unusual, completely embracing it. 

"Laughter is a really hard dragon to chase and I knew that very distinctly growing up around it," Williams tells Q's Tom Power. For Lisa Frankienstein, the fledgling filmmaker, who's the daughter of comedy legend Robin Williams, says she found comfort creating something niche, campy and a bit strange. 

 "People like to be liked," Williams says. "This is kind of the opposite of that." 

The film follows Lisa, a misunderstood goth teenager who falls in love with a Victorian corpse. "Lisa, in an interesting way, was used to not being liked," Williams says, "and then found one person who loved her, then realized someone else loved her and that was enough." 

Lisa Frankienstein explores how women are expected to grieve a certain way — more specifically, a way that doesn't disrupt other people. "A lot of times," Williams says, "people want others, whether they mean to or not, to grieve in the way they expect them to." 

Audiences who watch the film have drawn similarities between Lisa, who is grieving the untimely loss of her mother, and Williams. "It's interesting to see people draw parallels in a script I did not change," says Williams of the screenplay penned by Juno writer Diablo Cody. Although, there is a nod to her late father in the film with a pair of rainbow suspenders. "They actually belong to me … but it was nice to tie that together." 

There are other easter eggs hidden throughout the film, too, including nods to the director and camp legend John Waters and Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. 

And though the world of Lisa Frankenstein might resemble our own, it isn't our world, Williams says. "It's a universe where death isn't permanent. But I kind of liked the idea [that] if that universe exists in this movie, then maybe Dad exists in that universe, too."

The full interview with Zelda Williams is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Zelda WIlliams produced by Vanessa Nigro