Dylan Meyer has moved from screenwriter to director with The Wrong Girls, a loose, eccentric stoner comedy that mines a close friendship for its emotional core while refusing to play by the usual rules of realism. The film, which reunites Meyer creatively with her partner Kristen Stewart, pairs Stewart and Alia Shawkat as two best friends whose psychedelic misadventures are amplified — and literally voiced — by two telepathic cats.
A personal project with a surreal bent
Meyer, better known for screenwriting credits including XOXO and Moxie, drew directly on her own life for the film’s emotional framework. She told Mashable that the material grew from a period when she shared a chaotic, loving household with a close friend; that intimate experience has been channelled into a comic exploration of adulthood, companionship and the kind of low-fi survival that feels both precarious and deeply formative.
"Yeah, I lived with my best friend Maggie McLean, who's now my producing partner, for five years. But it was definitely like the happiest and most, like, safe five years of my whole life."
The script conflates domestic truth with outlandish fantasy: the protagonists ingest a drug derived from giant squid fluids that endows them with telepathic powers. That conceit allows Meyer to playfully rearrange perspective — and to give voice to the film’s cats, who are voiced by well-known comedians Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani.
Cast and character dynamics
The central pairing of Stewart and Shawkat is the film’s engine. Stewart, often admired for her chameleonic performances, reportedly reveals a more relaxed and candid side in the work, according to Meyer’s interview. Shawkat, familiar to audiences from Arrested Development, brings a complementary comic sensibility that helps ground the film’s looser flights.
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Frankie (one half of the duo) | Kristen Stewart |
| Molly (the other half) | Alia Shawkat |
| Cat: Dio (voice) | Seth Rogen |
| Cat: GG (voice) | Kumail Nanjiani |
Beyond the performances, Meyer cites inspiration from disparate cultural touchstones — from natural-history filmmaking like The Blue Planet to culty, ’90s-flavoured ensemble comedies such as Empire Records and character-driven female buddy films like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. That eclecticism informs the film’s tone: part observational, part absurdist, and frequently affectionate toward its protagonists despite their many flaws.
What the film signals
The Wrong Girls positions Meyer as a filmmaker willing to take tonal risks. By blending intimate, lived-in detail with a fantastical central premise — the squid-derived psychedelic that produces telepathic links — the film trades on a contemporary appetite for hybrid comedies that are as emotionally tender as they are oddball.
- Director: Dylan Meyer — making a feature debut after a career as a screenwriter.
- Leads: Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat as two best friends navigating life and psychedelia.
- Supporting voices: Seth Rogen and Kumail Nanjiani as the cats, injecting further comic texture.
The film’s mixture of personal truth and surreal conceit will likely attract viewers who favour character-driven, slightly off-kilter indie comedies. It also amplifies Stewart’s continuing interest in challenging, intimate projects that reveal facets of her craft beyond celebrity headlines. For Meyer, the picture is both a directorial calling card and a demonstration of the kind of oddball humanism that can make contemporary American comedies feel fresh again.
Further details on release plans and festival screenings were not provided in the interview, but the film’s cast and the strong creative thesis behind it ensure it will be watched closely by both critics and cinephiles curious to see how Meyer’s writerly voice translates to the director’s chair.
