The cast and creatives behind the new comedy thriller Borderline wanted to embrace the weird, and they’ve nailed it. From fandoms to the ego- and attention-hungry excesses of 90s young Hollywood, it’s got it all.
“It’s definitely in the texture of the movie,” muses the film’s lead, Samara Weaving, as we chat at The London West Hollywood. “I really liked and thought about what it would be like to be a pop star in the 90s, how, on the one hand, difficult it would be with not having any autonomy around the media’s narrative of you, and having actual stalkers, not just online, but coming to your house.”
“Then, on the other side, I love the little parts of her that are a little bit detached from reality, like having a candelabra with images of my head on it and a list of celebrity men I might date. That was really fun.”
Set in Los Angeles sometime in the decade before the millennium, the home of Weaving’s Sofia, a pop star, is broken into by an obsessive fan, Ray Nicholson’s Duerson. He believes they are getting married and, along with his accomplice Penny, played by Alba Baptista, chaotically sets the stage that will lead him and Sofia to exchange vows. Borderline, which lands in theaters and on digital on Friday, March 14, 2025, is written and directed by Jimmy Warden, perhaps best known for penning Cocaine Bear. It’s not only his directorial debut but also the first time he’s wanted to direct anything he’s written.
“It’s always hard to hand something over, but sometimes you think there are better people for a certain movie. This one was specific and weird,” he enthuses. “It wasn’t even that I thought I could do it better than anyone else, but more like maybe someone else would take everything that I liked out of it. They might make it like a straight down the middle horror movie or invasion thriller and give everybody masks and that kind of thing, so that’s what I was. Borderline has so many moments that I love in it, and I was excited to go shoot it.”
Casting ‘Borderline’
Although he wasn’t thinking about Nicholson for a role when he wrote Borderline, he considers the casting “a gift from the sky.” However, Ready or Not‘s Weaving, who Warden also happens to be married to, was part of the plan from the get-go.
“The part of Sofia was always written for Sam,” the filmmaker admits. “She reads everything, says she likes everything, but sometimes you can tell, but I think she really liked this one, so we took it on together. And then we found that guy.”
The actress adds, “I love all of Jimmy’s scripts. I do. I’ve been such a fan of his since I first read his stuff. We’ve been wanting to work together for a while, and he wrote this, and I just fell in love with it.”
So what were the team, who grew up in the 90s, obsessed with? Warden jokes that Weaving was obsessed with iconic nu metal band Limp Bizkit, something she denies, claiming not to be able to name a single track, even when treated to an impromptu rendition of their 1999 smash hit Nookie, by the director and Nicholson.
“Do you remember when Cartoon Network was out of its mind and had the weirdest stuff? I was into that,” she says.
Nicholson asks, “Like Courage the Cowardly Dog and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters? Like a mantra, I still say ‘Omelettes Du Fromage,’ which is a quote from Dexter’s Laboratory.”
“I was into Eminem and Dr. Dre,” Warden shares. “As a small kid, I was obsessed with John Travolta for some reason. My mom bought me a leather jacket that I wore when I was in kindergarten. It was so cool that sometimes they wouldn’t let me wear it in the classroom. I could always put it on a recess. I guess that’s a little earlier than the 90s, but of that period, it was probably Pulp Fiction.”
Steering the conversation back towards the film, Nicholson, who is also known for his performances in Smile 2 and Novocaine, loved that while Borderline is set in the 1990s, his character is only physically present.
“I think the thing that I also enjoyed was that he’s not necessarily 90s. He’s on his own planet,” he explains. “The thing that I took from the 90s because I was a child in that decade was that child-like thinking I had.”
The son of legendary actor Jack Nicholson, renowned for his distinct and iconic smile as much as his body of work, is carving his own path and even making the similar grin they share work for him in his own way.
“That was just something that came out of me growing up,” he reveals. “I survived the ‘Monkey see, monkey do’ phase, and I figured out which was me and which was him. In some ways, we’re similar; in others, we’re not. I also let it be what it is because he is my dad, and I can’t really be anyone other than who I am.”
Although not a musical, music does play a big part in Borderline. Although the classic Madonna track inspires it, that’s not the version that plays a key role in the film.
“That was one of the easier tracks to get in there,” Warden recalls. “That specific version was something that I wrote into the script because the Flaming Lips’ cover was a bit of an inspiration, or almost wholly the inspiration, to be honest, for the movie. If you think about it from a male perspective, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is weird and creepy. What if this guy is singing this song or saying these words standing outside of someone’s house where they’re not supposed to be?'”
Here’s What Influenced ‘Borderline’
Regarding other influences, the director called on a mixed bag of things, such as Wesley Snipes and Robert De Niro’s movie The Fan and, retrospectively once promoted, The Phantom of the Paradise.
“Now that you say it, it probably would have been a good reference to make at the time,” he laughs. “I should probably just be like, ‘Yes, totally. I’m a big fan of that movie, but that never came up. It is a great reference, though, so I wish I had thought of that. We were anywhere between The Bodyguard, The King of Comedy, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. There was also a documentary about obsessed fans called I Think We’re Alone Now. That was a big inspiration, as was Madonna’s Truth or Dare. That was something we watched and thought about a lot.”
Most of what was on the page made it into the movie, including all of the insane kills and a candelabra adorned with replicas of Sofia’s likeness.
“They took a 3D photograph of my head,” Weaving laughs. “It’s interesting how you write something, and it’s just on a piece of paper, and then you walk on set, and it’s a literal thing that has come to life. It’s in our kitchen now.”
However, the finale audiences get isn’t what Warden originally planned.
“There was a different version of the ending ages ago that was more of like a Scooby-Doo car chase at the end,” he concludes, laughing a little. “It was reminiscent of the Death Proof car crash where almost everybody died, but that was for budgetary purposes and also story purposes. We decided to shrink it down and make Borderline‘s finale more about the character. I’m glad we did.”