Um, what did, how did this project come about, first of all?

I was a teenager when the show came out, and I sneaked an episode, thinking that, uh, that it was gonna be something, ooh, I couldn't watch, and it was like people were talking about it, and here are these women who I thought looked completely, like, normal to me.

Like, I was like, no, if that's the people they're picking for the show, like, what does it mean for me? But then this, like, very big, huge, um, sort of wild thing of, like, we want to try to see if plastic surgery can change someone from the inside out.

And so as somebody who makes things and makes films about the empowerment of women, um, when Hulu approached me and said, "We're gonna be making this doc about the reality show from 2004, The Swan," I was like, "Yes, nope, I've got it.

Uh, don't go any farther.

Please, please." And then I started getting on conversations with Carrie and Christy and a bunch of other, our other Swan sisters, and the stories just started to flow.

You think you know what happened because of the show, but it's so not true, and through the course of the documentaries, um, all the tea is spilled.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm sure that, that the life coach and the therapist had the instructions, and it's a lot more juicy to the viewer to hear about your relationship with your husband than hear about, you know, something else that isn't as tantalizing to the audience.

Well, the thing, the thing is the show started off, um, by Nelly Galan.

That's the creator of the show.

And she said, and how she sold it to the participants through the casting process is, you are gonna go through an internal and external transformation.

The creator of the show ended up being a life coach on the show.

So she hand-selected the therapist, the nutritionist, all those things, but then she actually was inside the show.

And instead of doing, like, coaching, and I don't know what was going on when the cameras weren't rolling, but it was, like, um, it was, you know, fear-mongering around food and what people were eating.

And why did the show end? Do you know?

So like there, do you, did you have that speaking with people and sort of in the origins of sort of researching this story and going in this direction? What sort of, what did you learn about the impact of the Swan?

I mean, first off, like the, I got to sneak the show.

And as somebody who felt like fairly ugly on the outside and, I just, I wanted to believe in a reality where somebody was going to hand you a golden ticket and say, we're going to fix everything about you.

And then when that to happen, and it's like, sure, I would not talk to my friends for three months or sure.

I would try to work out after, um, after, you know, after getting surgery, then as you started watching the shows, like, Oh, well, they seem really upset.

They don't really seem like they're picking the surgeries.

Oh, there's Tanya being pressured into having a nose job.

But was there something that surprised you about a lot of the testimonials you heard from a lot of these women about their experience on The Swans?

How did you approach being able to gain their trust because this is so open and honest?

Of course.

Access is such a crazy thing in documentary, and if you don't have the goods, you're not gonna have the show.

And so we had this really interesting thing of, we had this really interesting job to, how do we involve people in a documentary without re-exploiting them, right? 'Cause they're both for entertainment value.

I was lucky enough to work with this company Expectation, who's a British UK company that, uh, had been developing it for many moons, and I was brought in to be, like, a closer of sorts, right? Like, the women would decide if they're gonna do this or a competing project.

Um, you know, and it was, for me, it was me making a film like, uh, At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal, where I know how to really be empathic and want to make the best film, but human first, filmmaker second.

And so we, we actually, you know, made this huge, big protocol when it came to the interviews.

What did you, what did you think in that moment?

So Erin, first with you, I know that you were a teenager when this aired, and it had an effect, so tell me your memory of the show and how this project came to you.

Yeah, I mean, I was basically Josie Grossy from Never Been Kissed.

I mean, I would...

They would say capital F Frump.

And so when I heard about this, I was like, "Wait, what? You can change your face using other people's tools?" Like, I feel like I had very little awareness about it, and, um, I, like, snuck an episode, and it just lived inside my subconscious.

And, um, as somebody who makes, uh, films about the, um, understanding women from those who are misunderstood to those who've been disempowered, The Swan felt like it was exactly in the uber or the kind of films that I would get to make.

And so Hulu is actually-

Where does she come up with this idea, and h- why did so many people go along with her?

Tell me more about your dad as a mentor to you.

So my dad's name is David Carr, and he was one of the most preeminent voices in terms of media journalism.

He overcame addiction and became a single parent, um, to us, and there was like welfare.

There was a stint for us in foster care.

There were all these things.

And, um, he really pulled himself up by his bootstraps and then became this like national figurehead at the, at sort of the New York Times with like 400,000 Twitter followers.

Unfortunately, he died 11 years ago, um, sort of at the height of his powers.

Oh, wow.