Paul Feig has always liked the moment where you realize you’re laughing at something you maybe shouldn’t be. With The Housemaid, he just stretches that feeling until it snaps.
The film, adapted from Freida McFadden’s wildly popular novel, opens like a glossy psychological puzzle — Sydney Sweeney’s Millie stepping into Amanda Seyfried's wealthy household that feels just a little too curated, a little too perfect — before gradually pulling the rug out and revealing something colder underneath. Feig knew early on that the appeal was in not sanding off those edges.
“The book’s really good. It was already on the bestseller list for like a year and a half when I came onto the project. So it was knowing, yeah, let’s not mess with it too much. Let’s just make it as cinematic as we can.”
He came to the material backwards, reading Rebecca Sonnenshine’s script adaptation before McFadden’s novel. That worked in the movie’s favor. “The script really pulled me in,” he said. “Then I read the book and went, ‘Oh — okay, you had to shorten things to get it into screenplay size. Now let’s bring this back. Let’s bring that back.’ Rebecca did a brilliant job.”
What drew Feig in wasn’t just the twists — though there are plenty — but the tonal bait-and-switch baked into the story. “We spend the first hour making you root for everything you’re not supposed to be rooting for,” he said. “And then we make you pay for it the second hour.”
That uneasy glide from sly, almost playful observation into something closer to horror wasn’t accidental. McFadden’s novel uses first-person narration to trap the reader inside Millie’s head, then flips perspective halfway through into Amanda's Nina. Feig usually insists on a single point of view, but this was the rare time he broke his own rule. “As my producing partner Laura Fischer says, the first hour is all questions and the second hour is all answers.”
It’s a structure Feig clearly enjoys weaponizing. You’re lulled into complicity, then confronted with the cost of it.
That approach also plays into one of Feig’s most consistent throughlines: his interest in female-led stories that refuse to behave politely. “I just love telling women’s stories,” he said. “I love working with actresses. There are plenty of movies about men. I’m always looking for great three-dimensional portrayals of women, whatever the genre is.”
That instinct runs straight through The Housemaid, especially in Elizabeth Perkins’ chilling supporting turn. Perkins’ character could’ve been flattened into shorthand — the icy matriarch, the wealthy villain — but Feig let her shape the menace herself. “Honestly, I didn’t give her much direction,” he admitted. “She came in with that character set. That icy kind of, ‘This is how you allow the help to dress in your house.’ She’s spooky.”
Feig’s direction, such as it was, often boiled down to restraint. “There were times I’d just say, ‘Stare at her for a long time before you say anything.’ It’s so unnerving.” Perkins, he added, thrives in that space. “Elizabeth is so good at it. I was just like, ‘I love what you’re doing. Keep doing it.’”
That trust extends beyond performance into physicality. Feig, a former actor himself, is adamant about letting performers control how they inhabit a role. “What you’re wearing and what you look like is as much a part of your research as the lines,” he said. “If you jam somebody into a costume they don’t feel right in, you’re hurting them.”
It helps, of course, that The Housemaid features what Feig cheerfully acknowledged is an absurdly attractive cast. “There were times my DP John Schwartzman and I were like, ‘Wow, this is a good-looking cast.’ You can shoot them from any angle. I can do my thriller stuff — get down low — and nobody’s saying, ‘Don’t shoot me from here.’”
And then there are the Feig signatures. The martinis. The gin. The quiet indulgences that double as personal Easter eggs. “If there’s a martini in it, it’s one of my movies,” he laughed. When the prop department brought out drinks with decorative lemon curls, Feig shut it down immediately. “I was like, ‘Get that out of here. Bring me a lemon and a knife. I’ll show you how to do a real twist.’”
That same specificity applied to narrative choices too, especially voiceover. Feig is famously wary of it. “Voiceover can be a crutch,” he said. In The Housemaid, it had to be earned. The solution was practical and character-driven: Millie’s journal, required by her parole officer, and later a letter written by Nina. “Now you know why this person is talking to you,” Feig explained. “It has to be something they’d actually write.”
Some elements were trimmed. Others were added. The ending, notably, goes beyond the novel. “The book ends very satisfyingly,” Feig said, “but it’s not cinematic enough for a movie. So we added to it.” The goal wasn’t shock for its own sake, but recalibration — especially when it came to Nina. “You hate her guts by the middle of the movie. By the end, you’re in love with her again. You realize what she went through.”
That reversal feels central to The Housemaid’s sting. It’s not just about twists, but about forcing the audience to reckon with how quickly it made its judgments and how eagerly it went along for the ride.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
