‘By Design’ Stars Samantha Mathis and Robin Tunney Share the ’90s Magic Behind Their Wild New Movie (Exclusive)
Learn about the funny way the stars first crossed paths early in their careers—and the sweet admiration they've long shared
By Design is a fever dream of a film starring Juliette Lewis as a woman who swaps bodies with a chair, only to find that everyone prefers her in the form of furniture. But it’s Lewis’ costars—The Mentalist’s Robin Tunney and Billions’ Samantha Mathis—who recently sat down to share the story behind their wild new movie and what it was like reuniting as three ’90s icons now in their 50s and fabulous as ever.
Tunney got her start in cult favorites like Empire Records and The Craft, while Mathis appeared in everything from Pump Up the Volume to Little Women. Together with Lewis—star of Cape Fear, Natural Born Killers and Yellowjackets on Paramount+—they’re three actresses who defined the decade, bringing that vintage ’90s cool to a film that feels timeless without being explicitly set in the past.
Director Amanda Kramer has cited everything from the original Freaky Friday to Beetlejuice to department store displays to the music video for George Michael’s “Father Figure” as inspirations for the film, and the singular result, which features the instantly recognizable voice of Melanie Griffith as its narrator, is a mix of soap opera and surrealism tied up with an unconventional yet potent commentary on body image and aging as a woman.
The film, which captivated audiences at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, is now playing in theaters. Robin Tunney, Samantha Mathis and Amanda Kramer sat down with Woman’s World to discuss bringing the stylish world of By Design to life, being “pixie brunette girls in the ’90s” and much more.
Woman’s World: Amanda, what was the casting process like for this movie? Did you know that you wanted to work with actresses who broke out in the ’90s from the beginning?
Amanda Kramer: The worst part about making a movie is when all of your hopes and dreams are inside of this gorgeous PDF that you think is so brilliant, and you feel so close to the material, and then you start receiving cast lists from agents, and there’s nobody that you actually want to work with. As the director, you think you’ll know exactly who you want, but you’re so rarely allowed to pursue that.
I create worlds in which I say, “I know who I want. I know who’s good. I know who’s interesting.” I want to be casting the people I care about. Juliette Lewis’ part was written for an ageless woman. There was no mention of how old she would be in the script, but I was being given women who were about 25. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being 25, but in that process, I kept thinking, “Is there enough pathos? Is there enough complexity?” I just wasn’t sure, and I knew that I wanted something more.
I had a lunch meeting with Juliette, and four minutes into talking to her, without asking my agents or producers, I said, “I have a part for you, if you want it.” I knew that she would change the whole dynamic of the film, because it meant that the actresses I cast opposite her as her best friends would also be women that represented her and her world. That was the turning point. I got to come back and say, “I cast Juliette Lewis in the lead, and now I want Samantha Mathis and Robin Tunney.” Once Juliette was locked in, I was allowed to choose the actors I wanted, and the movie suddenly had direction and a new life.
WW: Samantha and Robin, what drew you to your roles in the film?
Samantha Mathis: I’d worked with the producer, Miranda Bailey, when she directed a film, and she reached out to me and said, “You’re gonna get an offer, and you need to do this movie, because Amanda Kramer is extraordinary. You just need to trust me. Come make this movie, because it’s going to be an incredible experience for you creatively.” The material came my way, and I went, “What is this?” I watched Please Baby Please [Amanda’s 2022 film starring Demi Moore] and recognized instantly that she was a unique artist, and I wanted to go on any journey she’d ask me to.
Robin Tunney: I got this script from my agents, and I’d always wanted to work with Juliette Lewis and Samantha Mathis. I wanted to be them when I was 18. I remember feeling like I just wanted to have a career that was anywhere near theirs, because they were the coolest women. I admired them for so many years and felt like I had something to learn from them.
I’d never read anything like the script, and when I watched Amanda’s films, I’d never seen anything like them. She’s a leader and a visionary, and working with a team of women is incredible. You know exactly where you stand. I felt so held and loved and supported and seen, and it’s amazing that more women don’t direct, because they’re so well-suited to it. It was a magical experience.
WW: As young actresses in the ’90s, did you ever cross paths before this film?
Robin Tunney: When I was starting out, I’d get scripts that said they were looking for a Samantha Mathis type!
Samantha Mathis: On the first day that the three of us worked together, Juliette was like, “You know, Samantha, there was that role I really wanted, and you got it!” And then Robin was like, “Juliette, there was that part that you got that I really wanted!” We’d each gotten roles that the other one had wanted back then.
My hair was dark for my first movie, so everyone assumed I was brunette, and we were all the pixie brunette girls in the ’90s. I admire both of these women so much. They’re so talented, and they’re still doing it and being true to themselves, and they’re good human beings. It was such a beautiful thing to be on this set with these two powerful women. It was a gift.
Robin Tunney: Hollywood is so difficult on women, especially if you start as a teenager. The fact that the three of us survived and still love it feels like a miracle. I think that the culture is changing a bit, but it’s not a business that anybody has longevity in, especially women. We all still love what we do, and we’re not disillusioned by this hard business.
Samantha Mathis: Oh, girl, I’m disillusioned, but I keep doing it because I love it! Doing a movie like this reaffirms my commitment to being a storyteller. Amanda has been so inspiring to me and Robin because she doesn’t ask for permission to make movies on her own terms. She’s just doing it. When you follow that, the universe aligns. There’s such narrow-minded thinking in Hollywood about what you can and can’t do, but this movie shows that you can write on your own terms, cast who you want and make things the way you want to make them.
WW: The visuals of ‘By Design’ are so distinctive. Amanda, how did you approach bringing them to life, and Samantha and Robin, how did the aesthetic inspire your performances?
Amanda Kramer: The director Peter Greenaway once said, “We could have had a cinema of painters,” and that’s a very meaningful quote for me. I agree with it, and there’s no reason why every film—whether it’s an enormous, big-budget action-adventure, or a small, thoughtful, naturalistic indie—shouldn’t take such care toward the aesthetic. This is a visual medium, and I want every inch of my frame to be a painting, and luckily, my actors are gorgeously painted figures.
I don’t necessarily believe in specific time periods. I think that they can weigh you down, and a perfect ’80s set isn’t useful to me. I don’t really understand it, and it feels wrong. I like to work in a liminal space in my mind, where I try to remember what things looked like without using them as immediate visual references and follow that inspiration. I remember as a child, I loved magazines where women lived in these apartments that were pastel and concrete and had a little bit of marble. It’s such a choice. It’s so un-homey! Once that started to come together, I was like, “Well, this is obviously Juliette’s apartment.”
After the sets are designed, I can begin to think about the costumes. What’s great about the costumes in this movie is that they’re very fussy. They’re not how people would normally dress, but as soon as you put an actor in those costumes, they get it. The aesthetic is incredibly important because it makes the world feel immediate and helps the actors come together and say, “I know what movie we’re making now.” They’re playing, and now they know what the playground is. The best part is that the cast then gives the performances that make the sets and costumes feel natural.
Samantha Mathis: Amanda gave us everything we needed to know about the world we were in, from the costumes to the sets to the writing and the casting. She also gave us references to movies that inspired her, so the world we were living in was so clear. I still didn’t know exactly how to do it, but I wanted to throw myself into her vision, because she knows what she wants.
Robin Tunney: Filmmakers being painters is a dying art. In a lot of modern movies, the sets look like they went into a sample room at IKEA. There’s so little love that goes into most filmmaking, and it can feel disposable. You can’t be transported and have a real experience unless there’s love in every department. A lot of love went into this movie from everybody involved in it, but it wasn’t easy, and nobody was getting rich. As Amanda put it at Sundance, “We don’t have $1, we have 100 pennies.”
WW: What are your perspectives on the body image issues hinted at in the film?
Amanda Kramer: I wrote this script about a woman who didn’t want to be in her body, but not specifically because she didn’t feel young enough or pretty enough or thin enough or rich enough, but because she saw something that she just believed was more beautiful, and her obsession with it made her feel like maybe her life was not as wonderful.
Envy and jealousy run really, really, really deep, and self-confidence comes only after you’re able to stop looking at everything else in the world as a measure for yourself. Someone is always going to be younger, someone is always going to be thinner, someone is always going to be richer. This way of thinking ends up canceling everything out, because we’re all going in the same direction.
When you make a movie like this, all you’re trying to say is that there are things of beauty everywhere. There are things to covet. There are women who are amazing, and you could covet their lives, of course, but your life is your own. The journey of the movie is really about that question of what is an authentic self, and how can we love that?
Samantha Mathis: I have such compassion for us as women in this capitalist society that tells us we’re incomplete until we get the latest thing, whether it’s Lululemon pants or a Louis Vuitton bag or a salmon sperm facial or a 5th avenue condo. It’s so overwhelming. It’s ironic that we need to be seen, but we’re all on our phones all the time. We’re constantly being seen, yet we still don’t feel truly seen and connected. I think movies are really a beautiful artform because they allow us to connect with each other.
WW: This film is such a powerful showcase for ’90s stars, and there’s been so much nostalgia for that era lately. What made that time period so special?
Robin Tunney: It was amazing! In terms of making movies, there were a lot of things that were easier in the ’90s, and there was a lot less expectation of perfection. Every young actress now is dressed head to toe in stylish clothes and has filtered photos and their hair and makeup are always done. It’s more like a product that’s marketed, and you don’t really know who they are. We didn’t have that back then. We dressed ourselves for everything and did our own hair and makeup, unless it was something like the Oscars. You didn’t have to fit inside a certain box, and there were roles for you within that.
Culturally, things were less easy for women. I think it’s better now, and I think that women have more role models. I never worked with a female director then, and none of my peers were directing movies. I’m grateful that times have changed in certain ways and in other ways, I think there’s nostalgia for this pre-cellphone time that was more hopeful. People are disillusioned by how expensive things are now. I lived in New York on like $17 a day! All these people came to New York to pursue their dreams, and you could live in Manhattan and survive.
It’s become aspirational to think that you could actually be a bohemian, and it’s sad that that part of our culture hasn’t been nurtured. We need to nurture it by seeing movies like By Design and supporting creative visions. There was more space to grow and express yourself back then, and it’s been narrowing in a profound way. I hope the younger generation can stick it out and make things and find space for themselves, because we had it easier in that regard.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Woman's World does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.
