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Sundance: ‘Am I OK?’ Takes a Probing Look at Coming Out as an Adult

The directorial debut of Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne stars Dakota Johnson as a 30-something who struggles to navigate her personal relationships after revealing she’s gay.

When Tig Notaro got a request from Coldplay singer Chris Martin to do a surprise stand-up set at the 30th birthday of his girlfriend, Dakota Johnson, she just had one question: “Are you sure she said me?” Notaro, 50, was assured that she was, in fact, the favorite comedian of the Fifty Shades of Grey star. Still, she pushed back against the seven-time Grammy winner, saying, “I don’t want to walk out onstage and have her turn to you and say, ‘When did I say I liked her?’”

But Martin was correct, and Johnson was pleasantly surprised by Notaro’s birthday appearance. Now, nearly two and a half years later, Johnson stars in Am I OK?, the directorial debut from Notaro and wife Stephanie Allynne, 36, which is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 24. The movie, penned by The Ellen DeGeneres Show head writer Lauren Pomerantz, sees Johnson as a lost 30-something who comes out and struggles to navigate her personal relationships, especially one with her longtime best friend.

Coming out on film, as of late, has been reserved for young adults (see Love, Simon) or, as Allynne assesses, “There’s an obstacle that’s a religious problem or your family.” In Am I OK?, the co-directors wanted to depict a later-in-life sexual revelation and that internal aftermath — an experience with which Allynne personally identifies. “I’ve only been with Tig, and then I got cast on the reboot of The L Word: Generation Q, and I all of a sudden was thrown into this community that I was not really experiencing young,” she says. “You feel like, ‘Oh my God, all the time I spent not doing that, or not being gay, what was I doing?’”

Two weeks before filming began, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down production. Allynne and Notaro spent the following year in their Los Angeles home with their 5-year-old twin sons, Finn and Max, and three cats. When the city allowed filming to start up again, a pre-vaccine pandemic production start date was set for February, which came with an added layer of anxiety since Notaro is a breast cancer survivor. “I would say I felt pretty terrified, honestly,” she says of filming. “I just kept having this fear that, ‘Oh my gosh, if I get COVID, I’m screwed.’” The film’s 21-day shoot did end up having two COVID-19 shutdowns, but the exposures proved oddly assuring: “It made me understand how isolating and masks and zones and all of that worked.”

As for the directing, the couple never considered embarking on separate debuts. “We’re so fortunate we have the same taste and sensibility,” explains Allyne. “We could always return to that and let that guide us. Otherwise, I think it could really [have gone] haywire.” And a Sundance premiere marks a full-circle moment for the couple. Notaro, who used to volunteer at the fest during the 1990s, and Allynne first met on the set of the 2013 indie In a World …, which debuted at the Park City festival. “And now we’re married with kids and a production company,” says Notaro. “There’s no world where I would’ve gone into a feature without Stephanie.”

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