Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus director Sebastian Silva’s upcoming film, Nasty Baby, has a particularly compelling cast: it stars TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe and Kristen Wiig. Neither of them became famous for dramatic acting, yet both have displayed, across various indie films, an impressive aptitude for naturalist roles. The just-released international trailer sees Kristen Wiig playing the best friend of a gay man (portrayed by Silva); together, they’re going to make a baby, but soon the pressures put on each parent-to-be — both interpersonally and societally — manifest in outbursts and tensions.
When Silva’s character Freddy turns out not to be up to spermy par, Wiig’s Polly suggests Mo (Adebimpe), Freddy’s initially reluctant partner, give his sperm to the baby-cause. The trailer for Nasty Baby then shows Wiig and Adebimpe going through the usual motions of unromantically conceiving (sperm cup).
Though they live in the baby-bohemia of South Brooklyn, they find themselves having to deal with the disapproval of their families and a smattering of intolerant neighbors — both, it seems, due to racial and sexual traditionalism — and the trailer takes a strange tonal shift midway through. It’s not just a trick of the trailer, though. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Sundance review noted how the film ambles amiably along, until it “takes a very nasty left turn down a dark and perilous road to a place none of the characters has ever visited before, physically or figuratively.”
Adebimpe formerly starred in the 2001 film, Jump Tomorrow, and acted in Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married, and with The Skeleton Twins, Welcome to Me and The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Wiig seems to be becoming something of an indie dramedy staple. Nasty Baby looks like another reason to follow both of their dramatic film careers.
The film premiered at Sundance, and will be released on October 23.