BRILLIANT BO BURNHAM
Writer, Director and Actor + Promising Young Woman
Bo Burnham may be famous for his hilarious stand-up comedy routines, but over the last few years, he’s shown us that he can do more than make us laugh. In 2018 he made his feature film directorial debut with the coming-of-age comedy Eighth Grade, which he also wrote. The movie follows 13-year-old Kayla (Elsie Fisher), an awkward, introverted eighth-grader who makes YouTube tutorial videos (Burnham got his start by making comedic videos on YouTube) that make it seem like she has everything figured out. The movie, which deftly captures the extreme awkwardness, and cringe-worthy-behavior of those early-teen years, was released to great critical acclaim. It was nominated for the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and it won multiple awards, including the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film.
This year, fans got to see Burnham step into a role and a project like nothing he had done before when he played Ryan Cooper, a pediatric surgeon and the love interest to Carey Mulligan’s Cassie Thomas, in Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman. The movie follows Cassie, a young woman who dropped out of medical school after a tragic incident, as she spends her days working in a coffee shop and nights prowling bars for men to whom she can teach a lesson. When Ryan, a former classmate, reappears in her life, she decides it’s time to get revenge on the people responsible for her pain in the first place. While being laugh-out-loud funny, the movie is also a biting critique of rape culture and the emotional trauma that sexual assault leaves behind, not just for its victims but also for their friends and family.
Now, Burnham has a few projects in development. He is rumored to be in an upcoming Sesame Street movie directed by Jonathan Krisel with an A-list cast. He is also currently working on a new, as-yet-untitled screenplay about a pair of high school friends who dress up as superheroes and takedown bullies. Unlike with Eighth Grade, Burnham won’t direct this project. Amy York Rubin will direct it.
