Emma Higgins and Herman Tømmeraas Talk Teenage Obsession in “Sweetness”
This interview was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
Most teenagers have a dreamy fantasy of what would happen should they ever cross paths with their celebrity crush. It’s especially common in teens who have a crush on a musician. Something about the emotional vulnerability that comes with singers and band members writing their own lyrics makes people believe they know more about the celebrity than they really do. Writer/director Emma Higgins describes the ideal viewer of her debut film, Sweetness, as someone who has “shaved [their] entire body before a concert just in case, practiced kissing on their hand or a poster, shopped at Hot Topic, or worked at a mall.” If you’ve done any of those things, she says, Sweetness is for you.
Higgins grew up listening to Avril Lavigne in the Pacific Northwest, and she jokingly credits that upbringing as laying the foundation for what would become Sweetness.
“We’re known for being gloomy,” says Higgins. “It’s where grunge started. You never see the sun and you just get sad. In my teenage years, I had a lot of feelings and I think you can see them expressed in the film. At that time, Avril Lavigne was really with us. I think growing up with that music in that place probably just set the tone of these big feelings that you have. Sweetness was about tapping into that time of big feelings.”
Rylee (Kate Hallett) is Floorplan’s number one fan. She has used their music to get through the highs, but mostly lows, of her adolescence and the loss of her mother. Payton Adler (Herman Tømmeraas) is Floorplan’s dreamy frontman. He’s a swaggering combination of Harry Styles and Yungblud with floppy, moody bangs hanging over his eyes. A chance encounter between Rylee and Payton shatters Rylee’s image of him and she sees that he’s a drug addict struggling to be clean. That realization inspires Rylee to take matters into her own hands and “save” him.
Courtesy of SXSW and Sweetness
Tømmeraas got to experience the rockstar life as Payton Adler. Crowds screaming along to the words of his music, a sold-out show, and all the flashiness that stardom affords a guy. When asked what that experience did to his confidence, he jokes, “it kind of made me insufferable.”
“I think I turned into a monster for the remaining four weeks,” smiles Tømmeraas.
“Oh my God. It was only blue M&Ms, that whole thing from there on out,” teases Higgins.
“No, no, no,” laughs Tømmeraas. “I think a part of me has always wanted to be a rock star. Getting to actually play a rock star and being allowed to be on stage with fans watching…or at least people hwo are paid to be there, it was wonderful. I got to dance, sing, and stage dive. It was really a dream come true. The concert day was one of my best days on set.”
“So much sweat,” adds Higgins. “We just were spraying him down with sweat constantly.”
“I thought sweat was just water! Like, when you see sweaty people in films, I thought it was just someone with a little water gun spraying them and that would be it. It isn’t. Sweat or water just either evaporates or gets absorbed. So you have to have baby oil first and then water on that. I was extremely glossy and slippery.”
Tømmeraas is a skilled dancer, and those talents are clearly on display when Payton is on stage. He’s got a riveting persona that makes it obvious why Rylee is so infatuated with him. In order to really sell the rockstar attitude, Tømmeraas turned to his fictional bandmates, who were actual musicians.
“I was like, can you give me the number one tip to make it look like I know what I’m doing on stage?” recalls Tømmeraas. “It was like, when you hold the microphone, don’t hold it like this.”
Tømmeraas demonstrates by grabbing a television remote nearby and holding it at the bottom. Then he shifts his hand to the top to illustrate the correct way.
“Instead, put your thumb at the end of it and put the thumb on your lower chin like this. That little thing might seem insignificant, but the way that kind of made me relaxed whenever I did it, I think actually helped me out a lot.”
We are at an inflection point in terms of how celebrities and fans interact. Some celebrities, like Chappell Roan, are speaking out about the fact that she doesn’t owe anything personal to a fan. We’re seeing in real-time, with the breakout stars of Heated Rivalry, how fans feel entitled to know personal aspects of the lives of these actors. Sweetness is about this passion becoming obsession and spiraling into something more extreme. Higgins and Tømmeraas both believe that fandom is important, but there need to be guardrails.
“The main thing I have to say is that I’m such a big fan of so many things,” answers Higgins. “I think you can even see that in Sweetness, how much I’m a fan of other movies. We put little tributes to movies I love in the film. I’m a fan girl as well. I think when you look at someone with entitlement, that would be the difference.”
“I’m so grateful for filmmakers, musicians, artists of any kind that I like that they continue to choose to make more things for me to appreciate and enjoy,” continues Higgins. “But I certainly don’t feel entitled to their time or them. It has to be a perspective change, and I think that’s probably more to do with each individual person’s psyche than celebrity as a whole.”
“I certainly have people that I’ve felt like I knew them better than I actually did, when I, in fact, didn’t know them at all. They didn’t know I existed,” explains Tømmeraas. “I think it all depends on how much you’re actually exposing yourself to their work or how much you feel like you’re involved in that person’s life. How much you’re seeing them or hearing them or paying attention to them.”
“I think I’ve watched an unhealthy amount of How I Met Your Mother,” laughs Tømmeraas. “In my brain, if I would have met Neil Patrick Harris when I was 20, I’m certain I would have thought in my brain that he knew me very well. I understand where it comes from. I think it’s all about your experience of it and mentally how you deal with it.”
“I’m definitely like that with podcasts,” adds Higgins. “I’m a My Favorite Murder girl and I know a lot of people talk about podcasts like that. It’s like, we spend all this time together and we hang out and no we don’t. We don’t hang out. It just feels that way in my mind. They don’t know me.”
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