Charli XCX discussed her upcoming movie project, The Moment, in a new Vanity Fair cover story, calling the film a “2024 period piece” and “the realest depiction of the music industry that I’ve ever seen.”
Details about the mysterious project have trickled out over the past year or so, with Charli working on the project in the midst of last year’s Brat explosion. Earlier this month, a synopsis and cast finally arrived, with Charli set to star alongside Alexander Skarsgård, Rachel Sennott, Kylie Jenner, Rosanna Arquette, and more.
The Moment has been described as “based on an original idea” by Charli, and the synopsis reads: “A rising pop star navigates the complexities of fame and industry pressure while preparing for her arena tour debut.” While there are obvious parallels with Charli doing her first arena tours in support of Brat, she stressed that the film is fictional, and “not a tour documentary or a concert film in any way.”
But Charli did say that the idea for the project came about after she was pressured to make a documentary while on the road in support of Brat. “I feel like my problem with a lot of musician documentaries is it often shows the musician coming up against some kind of opposition and eventually overcoming it to be the hero. And that’s just not been my experience, you know? Maybe it has been a lot of other people’s, and that’s awesome,” she explained.
Instead, the film’s director and co-writer, Aidan Zamiri, said the film offers a kind of alternate history of the Brat era, showing what would’ve happened if Charli had made “entirely different choices” around the album.
Skarsgård, for instance, is set to play a documentary filmmaker in The Moment. The actor described his character as the person the record label “convinces Charli is the hottest director out there… the right person to capture Charli XCX and get the most out of this phenomenon that Brat was.”
Because The Moment is such a hyper-meta house of mirrors, Charli suggested that making it offered her the rare opportunity to actually reflect on this pivotal moment in her career. “I always find it hard to sit down and look at things with distance, because I am always moving on to the next thing,” she said. “I think that I process myself through my work. I’m writing about myself and my thoughts all the time, and my thoughts about what people think about me.”
The Moment doesn’t have a release date yet, but it is set to arrive in 2026. The stacked cast is also set to feature Jamie Demetriou, Kate Berlant, Shygirl, Isaac Powell, and Rish Shah. Charli’s frequent collaborator A.G. Cook will appear in the film, too, and he’s also handling the music.
(Also, for those who are wondering: Charli declined to comment on Taylor Swift’s “Actually Romantic” in the cover story.)
