Molly Ringwald is still processing that seminal era of being John Hughes‘ teenage muse.
Appearing on the latest episode of Monica Lewinsky‘s Reclaiming podcast to chat about fame and teenhood, the ’80s icon revisited some of her features with the filmmaker and said she now looks back at that particular period with a different lens. The revelation came during discussion about a previously shared anecdote about how Hughes wrote the screenplay for Sixteen Candles after seeing Ringwald’s headshot.
Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
Admittedly, Ringwald has “complex” feelings about being a muse for the director. “He told me that story, but, you know, when you’re that age — I mean, I had nothing really to compare it to,” said Ringwald of that Sixteen Candles story. “I had done more movies than John at that point, [but] I was still only 15 years old. So I didn’t have a lot of life experience.” Being a muse for an older filmmaker “didn’t seem that strange to me [at the time],” said Ringwald. “I mean, now it does.”
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“Like strange, still complimentary or strange weird, strange creepy?” asked Lewinsky.
“Yeah, it’s peculiar,” said Ringwald. “It’s complimentary. It’s always felt incredibly complimentary, but yeah, looking back on it, there was something peculiar.”
Now that she’s re-examined it from an adult perspective, “It’s complex,” added Ringwald. “It’s definitely complex and it’s something that I turn over in my head a a lot and try to figure out how that all affected me. I feel like I’m still processing all of that.”
Molly Ringwald and Michael Schoeffling in ‘Sixteen Candles’. Everett Collection
Ringwald starred in three popular Hughes features: 1984’s Sixteen Candles, 1985’s The Breakfast Club, and 1986’s Pretty in Pink. Amid the #MeToo movement, Ringwald famously penned a thoughtful essay about the complicated history of Hughes’ movies, citing the sexism, racism, and homophobia of that time.
The re-examination, she said, came after she rewatched The Breakfast Club with her daughter. “If attitudes toward female subjugation are systemic, and I believe that they are, it stands to reason that the art we consume and sanction plays some part in reinforcing those same attitudes,” wrote Ringwald, noting that Judd Nelson’s character, John Bender, continually sexually harasses her character, Claire, throughout the film.
“How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose?” reflected Ringwald in the essay. “What if we are in the unusual position of having helped create it? Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art — change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past, in all of its transgression and barbarism, so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go.”
Watch the full conversation with Ringwald in the video above.
