Georgia resident creates Marisa Tomei comedy ‘You’re Dating a Narcissist!’
Metro Atlantan Ann Marie Allison in her early ‘20s had a whirlwind romance crash and burn with a man who proposed to her just four months into the relationship.
“I thought he was the one,” Allison said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the Breadwinner Cafe & Bakery in Sandy Springs. “But walking out the door, he told me, ‘I never loved you in the first place.’”
Years later, happily married with two kids, Allison learned about narcissism and found the descriptives perfectly fit her ex-fiance. Narcissists, she said, can be charming and charismatic but are also self-centered, lacking in empathy and critical. They gaslight, making others believe they’re at fault. They seldom take responsibility for their own actions.
She had friends go through similar situations. As a screenwriter, Allison decided to parlay those experiences into a comedic film, “You’re Dating a Narcissist!”
“These people walk the earth among us,” Allison said. “I thought it would be fun to explore them.”
Now on video on demand, the film stars Oscar winner Marisa Tomei as Dr. Judy Kaplan, a psychologist, instructor and author who is an expert on narcissism and toxic relationships. (A major streaming service is forthcoming, though she can’t say which just yet.)
Kaplan, who has been burned in her own relationships, loses her mind when she finds out her 22-year-old daughter Eva (Ciara Bravo) is planning to marry a charismatic doctor Theo (Marco Pigossi) after just dating him for a few weeks.
She flies to Los Angeles to try to stop the wedding, bringing along her best friend Diane (Sherry Cola), who is struggling to break from her own seesaw relationship with a narcissist.
“There’s a little bit of me in Judy,” Allison admitted.
Allison, who spent part of her teen years in Atlanta and graduated from Lassiter High School, has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Georgia and a master’s in counseling and personnel services from the University of Maryland.
“I trained to be a therapist,” she said. “But the relationship happened then and I was so damaged. I don’t think I had the skill sets to help others go through this craziness.”
Allison wrote the first draft of “Narcissist” with her friend Jenna Milly in 2014. But it didn’t garner much interest, so she focused on other films.
In 2020, she co-wrote and produced "Golden Arm,“ a female sports comedy about arm wrestling that received strong reviews. She then co-wrote and executive produced the 2024 buddy comedy “The Fabulous Four” starring Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullally and Sheryl Lee Ralph, which did not do well in theaters.
Though disappointed by the results of “The Fabulous Four,” Allison said she did learn that “you have to sort of give up control of the outcome of your work. If you are constantly waiting and expecting external validation for your work, you may never make anything.”
Indeed, as soon as she was finished with “The Fabulous Four,” she jumped into the “Narcissist” film, inspired by a podcast “Navigating Narcissism with Dr. Ramani” by clinical psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula.
“I’d seen narcissism addressed in scary movies and thrillers,” Allison said. “I decided to hone in on comedy.”
Allison, who moved back to Atlanta from Maryland in 2022, formed Cool Girl Productions and raised money from investors to make the movie in Los Angeles. Though she declined to reveal her exact budget, she said it was under $5 million, which isn’t atypical in the independent movie world.
The key was landing Tomei, who Allison had in mind while writing the screenplay.
Throughout her long career, Tomei has shown broad range in both comedy and drama. She won an Oscar in 1993 for the comedy “My Cousin Vinny” and later landed Oscar nominations in dramas “In the Bedroom” in 2002 and “The Wrestler” in 2009.
“Marisa was passionate about the movie,” said Allison’s co-executive producer Jorge Garcia Castro. “She came in as a partner. We worked with her on the script as well.”
Tomei was happy to make Kaplan an often unlikeable anti-hero who spends much of the movie trying to undermine her daughter’s wishes, blinded by her obsession with narcissists, or “narcs,” as she calls them.
“Narc is her brand,” Allison said. “It’s like a cuss word to her. Their narcissism is like smoking cigarettes. It affects everyone around you.”
Allison ensured there was a contrast between Kaplan’s paranoia and daughter Eva’s sweet, naively optimistic approach to love, which actress Bravo found endearing: “As my connection to this story grew, I fell more and more in love with Eva’s vulnerability and desire to love those around her. A true romantic!”
Pigossi, who plays the purported narcissist, said he worked hard to make his character Theo as appealing as possible and not villainous. “Narcissists don’t walk around announcing themselves,” Pigossi said. “I spent a lot of time researching the psychology behind it, trying to understand how someone like Theo sees himself versus how he actually moves through the world, and that gap became the most interesting place to live as an actor.”
“Narcissist” was Allison’s first directing job, but Pigossi said she “brought such a clear, specific vision to this story. She created a space where you felt safe to take risks and trusted that the whole was going to be greater than the sum of its parts. That kind of environment matters enormously.”
The audience reaction, so far, has been solid with an 85% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. She said she can’t wait for the film to land on a subscription streaming service.
“I would love to do a sequel,” she said. “I’m thinking about ‘You’re Divorcing a Narcissist!’”