In Luca Guadagnino’s thriller, written by Nora Garrett, a devastating campus accusation unleashes a torrent of public and personal chaos that blurs the truth of what really happened beyond recognition. Secrets, deceptions, furies, and mixed agendas for the film’s five central characters soon collide in the morality tale that is After The Hunt. And as the tension mounts, the film becomes an intentional provocation, a mirror on this modern moment, probing the dynamics of power, privilege, and community—and how they interplay with a whole host of human frailties.
After The Hunt tells the blisteringly psychological story of gifted, unapologetically ambitious philosophy professor Alma Imhoff, who is in an all-out bid for the tenure she knows her work merits. But when Alma’s prize student Maggie suddenly asks for help, leveling charges against Alma’s colleague and close friend Hank Gibson, it threatens to uncover Alma’s own long-buried private history.
In celebration of After the Hunt, Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlbarg joined the AAFCA roundtable to talk about how the movie’s intricate storylines underline After The Hunt’s stark refusal to provide easy answers and instead barrel into the blurred, divided territory we all vividly recognize as the world we inhabit right now.
A story of an elite campus in turmoil was a magnet precisely because it felt destined to ignite conversation—not just about which people in the story are telling the truth but also about how status, desires, and prejudices tint our views of reality that transform an account of an alleged crime into a multi-layered investigation of human nature and the unknowable truth.
“There was like a safety in being able to go to those messy, dark places because we had begun to start to build that foundation. I felt personally just anchored and championed by Julia to have to be able to or get to go to those places. I had to slap Julia Roberts, which is not ideal to have to be able to do, but we had spoken [about it beforehand],” said Edebiri.
Roberts chimed in, “I didn’t want her to feel like she had to pretend. It’s hard enough performing and trying to get what’s inside of you outside in the right order and the timing to sync up with your partner, let alone to also have any kind of reluctance or fear. I just wanted to do whatever I could to remove that from any faraway voice in her, so she was completely free to perform in the way that she wanted to. [It] was really my responsibility just to make sure my friend Ayo felt comfortable giving the performance that she wanted to give.”
Roberts continued, “For both of those characters, I feel like they’re also in different ways at such lows. There’s something that also it’s a bit like gratifying that you get to have a release of that. For a lot of these characters there’s different things that they’re suppressing for different reasons. For Alma also to be calling out very specific things that Maggie doesn’t want to even be thinking about as far as how she relates to herself, her own identity. What she’s hiding? What she’s trying to project and sort of have envelop her in Alma? To have that come out, it was very intense, but I’m glad we were able to do it together.”
As Alma’s staunchly loyal husband Frederik, Stuhlbarg plays the film’s sole outsider to the tight-knit university world, an observer to all the politics of academia in which his spouse is embroiled—but also a man driven by an almost overwhelming, at times self-denying, admiration for Alma. Alma is the spouse chasing acclaim, success, and the freedom to pursue what she wants whereas we usually see a woman supporting a man in those kinds of endeavors. Frederik genuinely loves watching his wife shine. But also, he is starting to realize that no matter how deep his devotion to Alma, he cannot force a similar depth of devotion in her, simply for it being there. Stuhlbarg gives us a complex human being who truly wishes to see Alma achieve what she wants even if he is hurt and shunned in the process. He is a tragic figure dealing with the consequences of other people’s actions and desperately wanting to be loved back. There is a sad longing to Frederik, and Stuhlbarg lets you in on that.
“By giving Frederik such a giving nature, that allows you to see Alma in a warmer light,” Stuhlbarg observes. “You see the reasons he adores her, and whatever your feelings about Alma, one absolute truth in the film is Frederik’s love. And that was a beautiful thing to play. Frederik’s devotion seems almost immune to Alma’s actions. He is like the eye of her hurricane, her stillness and her calm. And instead of going on the expected journey of pulling away from her, his relationship with Alma only gets deeper as things get more complicated.”
Frederik is himself an estimable psychiatrist. Stuhlbarg leaned into the backstory of a man raised by two Freudian psychoanalysts, who has a broad appreciation for human entanglement and indulges his passions for art, music, and food. As for what continues to connect him to Alma despite her taking him for granted, Stuhlbarg says, “Frederik knows at the core they’re both hungry, searching souls. ” For Stuhlbarg, a big element of the role’s excitement was getting a front-row seat to watch Julia take on this immensely complicated woman. But she was also an absolute dear to be with, completely open, and so much fun. She was everything you could ever want in a scene partner.”
“Alma has evolved by the end of the film because of their power dynamic and trust.” Frederick is already quite evolved. [He’s] evolved from the beginning. I think Alma is the most unburdened by the end because she has revealed something to Frederick, who is the center of her world. So, I think in that regard there’s a big change. I don’t know if it’s evolution. I think that type of unburdening might be more involved,” said Roberts.
“I do. I feel like Maggie definitely has made a 180 by the end, by the last scene in the diner, like in terms of appearance and how she carries herself [and] who she associates with. But I don’t know, and I feel like I could see it either way, how internal that change is or how evolved it is. If it is really her finally accepting parts of her identity, her hair is natural. She’s wearing bright colors. She’s not dressed like Alama. But is that another type of performance up for debate? Frederick got knocked out just because he already is more evolved,” said Edebiri.
“I had a friend say one time, If you want an interesting relationship, stay in one.’ And that is, I think, speaking so well to Alma and Frederick and how long they’ve been together and how truly deeply devoted they are to each other and how unconditional.” Particularly Frederick, he is unconditionally in love with his wife,” was said by his wife, and I think that people are so taken with these two characters in a way that I hadn’t really expected,” said Stuhlbarg.
“It’s so moving to me because they’re so flawed and real and almost so damaged, and she is so exhausting in her posturing and her performances. And this is the only place where she can in any way allow the shield to slip. And so, they were really some of the more exciting scenes to portray just because for me, Michael would do things so unexpected and not things that are just written down. You know, Frederick walks through the room, and Alma watches him go. Suddenly it turns into this incredible thing. And I’m looking at him with this love and admiration. I just felt like everything Michael did made me look like a great actor. So, I want to be with Michael all the time. If it says anything about love or the evolution of love, it is that regardless of what happens to these two people, I think they made a good choice with each other in deciding to stay together,” said Roberts.
“I think his devotion towards her, she feels that, and people often say there’s the love, but I also feel like those things often swap places in the most delicate of times as well. The person you choose to be with at the beginning of a relationship isn’t necessarily the person you’re going to be with, you know, down the line, and I guess part of love is accepting someone for who they are and who they’re turning into, and I guess you need to decide as a couple whether or not you want to continue to grow and change and morph and live your life together. It’s an adventure; love is in my experience, and I think because we’ve had respective experiences with just that in our own private lives away from our characters, we could bring those elements together and maybe understand those decisions. Acceptance of each other makes love even deeper, especially in the most troubled of times. I’m finding that in my own life as well. There’s something, though, like I feel like as just a viewer, where, like, I’m sorry, but like, about the fidelity that they both have to each other, that it is sort of surprising, because maybe there’s a piece of you that goes, ‘Oh yes, I’m watching a movie, so of course even Alma’s like, “No, that’s my man.”‘ ‘That is Fredrick; I am sticking by him, and he is sticking by me, and we have a foundation that we have built so that it doesn’t matter if anybody might not understand what it looks like, even if sometimes we inside of it can’t understand the shape, but that’s what we have chosen, and I find that really moving and fascinating and important,’ Roberts finished.
To learn more about After the Hunt, check out our full interview in the video above.
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