Annapurna Sriram has a lengthy showbiz resume, acting in massive series like “The Blacklist” and “Billions,” indie films and other projects. Yet, after a childhood obsessed with daring cinema from auteurs like John Waters, she didn’t feel she was living up to her creative potential.
“As an actor who is ethnically ambiguous, I was getting pigeonholed into a lot of really boring, sort of racial stereotypes,” Sriram says. “‘You’re the brown girl with a headscarf whose parents have an arranged marriage. You’re the doctor in this.’ So I felt like that didn’t excite me, and if I wanted to be a doctor, I’d just be a doctor. I’d make a lot more money, and my parents wouldn’t stress out so much.”
So began the long genesis of “Fucktoys,” her debut feature which is set to premiere tonight at the SXSW TV & Film Festival. Sriram wrote, directed, produced and starred in the film, which tells the story of AP, a sex worker in run-down Trashtown who is told by a local psychic that she has a dark curse on her and must make $1,000 to fund a ceremony to have it removed. From there begins a road trip story of sorts where, alongside her best friend-but-maybe-more Danni (Sadie Scott), AP has to navigate some odd — and potentially dangerous — johns.
Sriram, who spent her upbringing in Nashville borrowing cult movies like Waters’ “Polyester” from the local library, was interested in making a bold and dynamic film but realized her vision would only come to life if she wrote it herself. Luckily, fate intertwined with ambition in a unique creative birth for “Fucktoys.”
“I was feeling frustrated as an actor because I thought, ‘Where are all the weird movies that I wanted to be in?’” she says. “When I was in my 20s, I realized, ‘OK, I’m going to have to do this myself, because no one is going to write the fun shit that I want to play.’ I had this breakup happen in my late 20s, and it was because a psychic told me that if I didn’t dump my boyfriend, I was going to get really sick and wasn’t going to have the career I was supposed to have. So I called him and said, ‘OK, the psychic says we have to break up.’ I got off the phone and felt like an insane person, because who has a call with a psychic who’s like, ‘Do this life-changing thing,’ and then you immediately do it? So I felt very gullible and naive. I was heartbroken, and I started writing scenes.”
Sriram says many of the lines of dialogue from men in the movie were “things that men would just say to me,” and some of AP’s unique interactions were lifted from “sexual encounters that were that strange.” Yet, in keeping with the film’s largely funny and quirky tone, she wanted to depict kink in a way that isn’t often portrayed in contemporary films.
“When it comes to BDSM or kink, in my experience in that world, there’s a lot of casualness in reality that in narrative is heightened into this sexy, larger-than-life experience,” Sriram says. “But at the moment it’s a lot more mundane and kind of casual. I wanted to frame a lot of it in a normal, everyday way, so that it was not such a scary, distant thing. Fetish and kink… everyone kind of has it and it’s fine, so I wanted to demystify it and present it as fun and absurd.”
Even the title “Fucktoys” — a riff on “fuckboys” that also serves as the name of a key strip club in the film — came from Sriram’s desire to playfully poke at ideas around sexual norms.
“It’s a reaction to how I was feeling about the safeness of the stuff that was being made at the time I wrote it,” she says. “It’s living in a very contained commercial place and I wanted to make something that is out there, and loud, and in your face and unapologetic. I was also like, ‘It’s a joke.’ I had fun feelings about it. And then as I attached my producers, they all said, ‘We love the title. No one is ever going to forget it.’”
Looking back on the long process of developing “Fucktoys,” Sriram tears up remembering a heartfelt call she received about the NSFW film that made the hard work feel worth it.
“My parents have been very supportive,” she says. “When we got into SXSW, my dad and I had a phone call where he said, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t more supportive.’ I think he felt guilty for maybe not understanding it because this has been an eight-year journey for me. I think for him it was, ‘I was being a supportive dad, but I didn’t believe in what you were doing.’ Now that we have this premiere, we had this very touching call. Regardless of the content, I think they’re just happy it’s done and that I can move on with my life, but that also it’s going to be recognized in a way that’s art and not just a hobby.”
“Fucktoys” premieres at SXSW on March 9 at Alamo Lamar 5 at 9:15 pm. Click here for tickets and more information about other screenings. Watch the “Fucktoys” trailer below.
