SXSW 2026: EDIE ARNOLD IS A LOSER Interview- Making a Messy, Honest Punk Teen Movie

At this year’s SXSW, Film Inquiry got to sit down with writer‑director Megan Rico, co‑director Kade Atwood, and stars Adi Madden Cabrera and McKenna Tuckett to discuss Edie Arnold is a Loser, a punk-rock coming of age film, from its Catholic school roots to the joy of embracing imperfection.

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

It’s very nice to meet you all. Congrats on the movie. I really enjoyed it.  So how’s your South By experience?

Megan Rico: It’s going really well. It can be overwhelming. We have shed tears today. All of us. Even McKenna’s dad shed tears tonight.

Good tears?

Megan Rico: Good tears. Just overwhelmed. Emotional.

Great. Megan, you wrote and directed it, so I just want to know — take me through your decision to combine teenage life, punk rock, and the setting of a religious school. Take me through that writing process and where that came from.

Megan Rico: Totally. I think everyone has a coming‑of‑age story in them, even people who don’t write. I’m sure if you talked to me about what it felt like for you to grow up and be a teenager, it would feel so specific, and I’d be so curious about it.

This one — a lot of it was mine. I went to an all‑girls Catholic school in Miami, Florida. I was very visibly different in a way that made me feel like I stood out too much, and I felt so self‑conscious all the time. The punk stuff (I was never a musician) but finding my voice artistically and finding creative collaborators was when I realized the things I thought were flaws in myself, or the things I was insecure about, were actually strengths. I just needed to find the right people, and we could make fun stuff together. I always felt like punk music is such a perfect way to showcase that theme, and such a perfect analog for adolescence. It’s also such a perfect way to dramatize the feelings you have when you’re an adolescent, because for me, at least, I was so angsty and feeling so much emotion. I wanted to scream all the time. Punk music is that. It’s loud. It’s messy. It’s a celebration of emotion and scrappiness. Marrying those two things together felt really correct to me.

And kind of the opposite of Catholic school.

Megan Rico: Yes! With Catholic school, there’s so much arbitrary rigidity to disciplinary stuff. When I was in Catholic school, I thought I was such a bad kid because I was getting in trouble all the time. In reality, it was uniform infractions — my socks weren’t the right length, things like that. I was like, why are we talking about this? Punk is the opposite. You can really just be whoever you want to be.

You said you kind of dove into art at that time. What were you creating?

Megan Rico: I was always a writer, and I was also an illustrator. But I keep saying it’s more cinematic to watch someone do music than to watch someone draw at their desk.

So does that integrate into the film, with the drawing and stuff?

Megan Rico: Yeah, I actually did all of those. That was very fun.

Wow! So cool. For you two, our stars, I’m wondering — did these characters remind you of yourselves at all? And what is it about these female characters that stood out against other teenage movies?

Adi Madden Cabrera: I love that question. I do think Edie is in me. Playing her, especially thinking about myself at her age, made me reflect on myself as a kid. She views herself as a loser when in reality she’s quite cool. It made me realize, actually, I think I was pretty cool too. It healed something in me. I also really love their friendship. In stories where there’s an emphasis on the friendship between two girlfriends, there’s often cattiness or jealousy, and that just doesn’t exist in this film. Their friendship is so simple and natural, and I really love that.

McKenna Tuckett: I was actually in high school while filming this. I think the thing that really helps you survive high school is the friendships you make and surrounding yourself with good, kind, cool people — and those tend to be the dorks. I remember reading the script and thinking, usually when I watch movies about girls, there’s all this pressure to be hot and look way older than you are. This felt like actually living as a high schooler. The humor is crass but kind. It’s not out of malice — we’re just yelling and saying stuff. Having these characters just be who they are — awkward, gross, funny — was so attractive. Francis is such a larger‑than‑life character. She’s confident and not afraid to mess up, and that’s something I’ve had to learn from her. I’m such a perfectionist. Everything needs to be in its box. Sometimes it’s hard to pursue something because I feel like I don’t have all the tools. In the movie, when Frances does that improvised song, and Iggy says it’s terrible, she’s like, “Yeah, but it exists.” That’s such a good lesson. This movie wouldn’t have been made if we were afraid to just go for it.

I love that. Did you keep the headgear?

McKenna Tuckett: Yeah, actually, the braces are my actual retainer. I have a different one now that I sleep in. Sometimes I put it on and think, “Oh, hello.” I really love how Frances isn’t waiting for anyone to tell her she’s pretty. She isn’t trying to hide herself to be more attractive. She’s just like, “I am here.”

How did you build that relationship together on screen?

Adi Madden Cabrera: Even before we got to set, we had already laid the groundwork. Before either of us had our roles, we bonded during callback auditions. We just naturally connected.

McKenna Tuckett: There was a moment during a chemistry read where the scene kept getting bigger and bigger, and we just looked at each other in character. We were so in sync. Megan’s writing has such a specific rhythm, and we were both able to fall into it. Everything with this movie felt very natural.

Kade, how did you get involved, and what was the directing process like?

Kade Atwood: Megan and I worked together on a sketch comedy show in Utah, and we lived together with a bunch of people in a place called Dude House. I don’t think we would have met any other way. Megan was a writer on the show, and I was starting to slide into directing. Around that time, Megan said she wanted to direct more. I told her she should, she has really great instincts. I asked if she had any scripts that weren’t set in outer space. She sent me this one. At first, I didn’t think I would resonate with it, but I read it and really did. I told Megan I didn’t think I could direct it alone because it wasn’t my lived experience. I offered to produce it if she wanted to direct solo, but I would love to direct it with her. Collaboration felt right.

Megan Rico: I had to think about it because it’s a big step to link yourself creatively to someone. The cons were ego‑driven,  like not getting all the credit,  but the pros were collaboration. Making a feature film is such a heavy workload, and having a partner made it possible.

Did anything change creatively once filming started?

Megan Rico: The movie was already in the script. We shared a lot of the same references and aesthetic sensibilities. The hardest part was communicating what was in our heads to the cast and crew. Having two of us helped because we could tag in and out when one of us didn’t have the language or bandwidth in the moment.

What about the music? Were you musicians?

Adi Madden Cabrera: I had basically no drumming experience. I knew how to do a really simple 4/4 beat. I did lessons and practiced a lot. I fell in love with it.

McKenna Tuckett: I sang for a long time, but punk was very new to me. During callbacks, I got COVID and was stuck in bed watching videos about the history of punk music.

Do you have a favorite scene now that you’ve premiered?

Adi Madden Cabrera: I think the car scene with Lucas. It was just such fun. It was the first time I did a car rig. Well, everything in this movie was the first time I did anything. But yeah, it was a car rig, which was crazy. Lucas was actually driving. We had a walkie-talkie so they could give us notes. They were like in the car in front of us or something. And it was just such a fun day. 

Megan Rico: For me, that big finale, like the big finale performance of Eat Me when they’re opening for the Sex Pistols. Yeah. It’s maybe my favorite scene to shoot because we just kind of by happenstance. We happened to shoot all the musical performances in chronological order. And so by the time we were shooting that one, McKenna was so lived in with the song, and Adi was a good drummer. I feel like I watched them really develop as a band. And I just remember being so proud watching, I don’t know, especially watching Adi drum that song on her own and also hit all of her marks and all of her performance moments. It’s a difficult thing to do. And this is a girl who, 10 days before, had never even stepped foot in front of a camera.

McKenna Tuckett: I loved any time that you put Edie, Francis, and Walter in a scene. Because, really was, it’s like a spectrum of energies. Like, Walter’s like this…I don’t know, like a talking pillow. Like, he’s very like, Not even stoic, just kind of like there. And then like Edi is so into it, and it’s fun. I was watching it last night, and I was like, what even am I doing with my face in this moment? Because Frances is just like, so over it. [Laughs]

Kade Atwood: For me, my favorite thing to watch was probably the opening credits sequence.

They are so fun!

Kade Atwood: Thank you. We had actually shot it differently, and… When we were going through the footage, Megan and I, it was a bad time because we were just like, this is not our movie at all. This is not the thing we set out to make. This is not great. And then we ended up reshooting it. And now it’s OUR movie. And it very much is the thing that we set out to make. And it’s very fun, very unique, very cool, very stylized. And, just to see that, I don’t know, come together and like very clearly like the thing that was in our head then now be on the screen.

Megan Rico: That’s the closest one-to-one for me. The opening credits sequence to what we imagined, I think in the whole movie that is almost exactly

Congratulations. Thank you all so much!

We want to thank Megan Rico, Kade Atwood, Adi Madden Cabrera and McKenna Tuckett for taking the time to speak with us.