Pop Culture Moms · Good Morning America, ABC Audio

Julianne Nicholson on emotionally unavailable moms and ‘Janet Planet’

·43 min·2 clips

Nicholson says Annie Baker was thinking that "searching with men" would not fix anything for Janet.

The episode opens with the hosts joking about A24, because of course it does. Then they move into Janet Planet, a film set in Western Massachusetts, which matters to them because that is also where they met and went to college. That grounding helps. They talk about Lacy as an 11-year-old whose whole summer revolves around her mother Janet, and keep returning to how different that kind of closeness can feel now compared with parenting in 1991. Nicholson is careful and thoughtful about Lacy's perspective. She says she understood the character, but not as a direct version of her own childhood. That answer keeps the conversation honest. One host then opens up about identifying hard with Lacy, especially after growing up with a single mom and becoming her mother's confidant, counselor, and emotional stand-in. The memory lands. They talk about the kind of intimacy where a kid wants to sleep on a parent's pillow just to catch the smell of her hair, and that detail becomes a way of talking about devotion, loss, and the fear of losing the one person who feels essential. Julianne Nicholson keeps bringing the focus back to Janet and the way a child can organize so much of her inner life around that one relationship. Zoe Ziegler's performance becomes another big thread. Nicholson says the young actor feels different when the camera is on her, not because she is pretending, but because the shift between Zoe and Lacy feels so alive. That lands as true for the film. The hosts also linger on how present and watchful Lacy seems in scene after scene. The talk keeps folding pop culture into family feeling. It starts with movie enthusiasm, then turns into a conversation about what daughters see, what mothers hold back, and why certain performances stay with you. By the end, Janet Planet comes through as a summer movie about attachment, distance, and the ache of loving someone who cannot fully meet you back. Pop Culture Moms makes that ache feel intimate, loose, and very human.

As heard by us

A grounded actor interview that turns Janet Planet into a sharp look at mother-daughter gravity.

Julianne Nicholson's Pop Culture Moms appearance stays close to Janet Planet and the mother-daughter bond at its center. The best stretch is when she moves past plot recap and into the film's real emotional weather: single-mother devotion, grief, and the way care can slide into…

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Why you'd press play

Play this when you want Janet Planet to feel painfully, recognizably close to home.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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