How Pink Skies Ahead Transformed Jessica Barden's Relationship With Mental Health

It was three days before Christmas any time the actress Jessica Barden derived a Instagram DM from Kelly Oxford, the New York Times best-selling author of When You Find Out the World Is Against You. This wasn’t out of the ordinary — the two had struck up a friendship online about five years back soon after Barden discovered Oxford’s writing — although the context of the message definitely was. “Hey, I’ve written a script. It’s about one of the passages in my book,” it read. “We have to film it in Los Angeles in the summer because I have kids. Let me know in case you desire to do it.”


“I was like, this is the most iconic job issue I’ve ever gotten,” Barden says over Zoom from Sydney, Australia. The 28-year-old’s career has included standout performances in the dark comedy The End of the F***ing World and the edgy rom-com The New Romantic, and she is now “living the ideal life ever” down under while filming the upcoming Netflix thriller series Pieces of Her alongside Toni Collette. “No one had ever straight proposed me a movie before so I thought, I hope she thinks that she’s not creating a mistake.”


The project was MTV Entertainment's Pink Skies Ahead, a unapologetic and brutally sincere coming-of-age story in which Barden stars as Winona, a 20-year-old writer whose world is turned upside-down whenever she moves back in with her parents soon after dropping out of college. She is afterward diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and in one pivotal scene, her attempts to don't think about her mental health and “act normal” induce a tear-filled panic attack. Written and directed by Oxford, the film, which premieres Saturday (May 8), is based on her own experiences living with anxiety as a teen and was adapted from an essay titled “No Real Danger.”


Due in part to these heavier moments in the script, Barden felt equal parts thrilled and nervous once accepting the role. Despite her beginning reservations, the actress related to Winona’s denial of her diagnosis and saw it because the best possibility to “do something constructive” with a piece of herself she was equally avoiding: her own anxiety. “When I read the script, I felt so lucky that she wanted me to be a piece of making people feel better about [having anxiety],” she says. “I wish that this movie existed While I was younger.”


MTV News: Pink Skies Ahead is based on Oxford’s own experiences living with anxiety. Did the fact that Winona is based on a real person change your approach to the character?


Jessica Barden: I have this theory that every movie is slightly autobiographical for a director because I think that’s why they would desire to create it. So this made it easier, actually knowing that this was a segment of Kelly’s life. It felt like we were sharing the role with each other, especially with the panic attack scene. I felt like I was sharing the mad as well as the embarrassment. Everyone’s panic attack is going to look different. That was a blend of how Kelly and I feel ours manifest, however you could have a totally silent panic attack and it also doesn’t mean that you have far less anxiety than anybody else. Telling people that you throw up from anxiety is personalized, yet knowing that you’re doing this scene and you also have this connection and friendship with the director makes everything so much easier.


MTV News: What was on your mind while filming that scene? 


Barden: This was just certainly one of these schedules where you determine, OK, I just have to commit and do it. I just had to run into that fire and hope for the ideal, nevertheless I was so tired by the weekend. I had swollen eyes the complete shoot. It was only the second day that I met this crew and I thought, these folks are going to think that I’ve really got a lot of pain indoors of me have the ability to do this all of the time. Yet they were really supportive.


MTV News: From her hair to her wardrobe, everything about Winona is blue. We often describe mental health ailments as invisible illnesses, yet this felt like a visual manifestation. Although no one around Winona sees her struggling. How come do you suggest that is?


Barden: She’s not really involving them. Any time As soon as I made this movie, I was the same. I knew that I had anxiety because I was afraid of things that some people weren’t. I thought, I don’t need to get help. This makes me interesting. I don't care. That’s what anxiety does. It just works its way into your life. That’s what happened to Winona. You get used to your life feeling like it’s on fire all of the time to the point where it’s really easy to suppress it. It might take you years hope to [get help]. Winona is the same as millions of people: You sort of know that there’s something wrong, however it’s such a task to repair it.


MTV News: At times, Pink Skies Ahead felt reminiscent of the five stages of grief. Viewers watch Winona fight each step before ultimately accepting her anxiety disorder as piece of herself. How has being segment of this film fine-tuned, reinforced, or challenged your perspective on the significance of mental health? 


Barden: I got a therapist right after this movie. Several people that worked on this film, in back of the cameras or in front of it, had their own relationship with anxiety. I have a therapist right now because I realized from [speaking with] all these different people that I'm not supposed to swing from being afraid to feeling like I’m fine. That’s not a constructive way to live. It helped me grow up and learn that I might could genuinely have a calm life. Any time If I was watching the film right after, I might remember the scenes where I was really having anxiety, and any time as soon as you watch yourself doing that, you realize it doesn’t have to be like this. The full experience begin right up to completion helped me make my life a lot healthier.


MTV News: Mary J. Blige plays Winona’s therapist, Doctor Monroe. What was it like working alongside her? 


Barden: She was so nice! She’s literally one of the most famed people in the world. I didn’t know what it was going to be like because I’ve never really been starstruck before, yet she felt like a superstar. And then if she came, she was this really sweet, quiet woman who was there to act. I realized that I required to get it with each other because she was a normal person. Before the scene, we were talking to each other and saying that we were both nervous. It was so funny because everybody’s routinely the same.


MTV News: Winona has a strained relationship with her mom and dad; both sides seem wish to bridge the gap, nevertheless can’t quite get there. Where do you suggest the disconnect between them lies? 


Barden: Around that age, you don’t ever want your mom to be right. You need everything they propose to be wrong. It’s a devastating relationship you visualize in this film because they love her so much, and she thinks it's so embarrassing. Like, how dare you love me? Her anxiety needs to be the main relationship in her life. It needs to be at the center of everything. It’s unmanageable and her parents have to watch their child be overtaken by it.


MTV News: While Winona externally can be blunt and unapologetic, she’s also incredibly susceptible. How did you work to balance both parts of her personality?


Barden: I remember that we were really worried about that because it is so contrasting, however it’s also why I love the character. Parts of her are so aggressive and in your face, and then parts are so weak. In truth, I tried not to picture it. I pick a lot of roles that have somebody who’s very strong nevertheless also very susceptible at the same time, or in this case, somebody who is seemingly very confident and brash nevertheless on the indoors is fully lost. Especially in a film like this, it just had to be as organic as possible because there’s nothing harder than being like, how do I act a mental health distribute? I trusted Kelly, the script that she wrote, and her eye overseeing everything I was doing.


MTV News: At times, Winona’s brutal honesty reminded me of Alyssa from The End of the F***ing World. Is there something in particular about these stories that inspires you? 


Barden: I saw someone made a meme about me on the world wide web and it also mentioned, “Jessica Barden being recommended a role that isn’t totally unlikeable” plus it was me slapping the phone from [Adele’s “Hello” video] closed. I couldn’t stop laughing because that’s so true — I love playing characters that are unlikeable. Not because I necessarily think that I am hard, however each person is, however I just love playing people that are complex and messy because I don’t know anybody that’s not. I pick characters that remind me of myself.


MTV News: Winona dates Ben, whom she describes as a “less-funny Ross.” Which Friends character are you most like? 


Barden: I’m certainly like Phoebe. One of my companions literally cried the other day because he was like: “I don’t know what you’re doing anymore.” I was like, “What do you mean? I’m in Australia filming a TV show.” Then he said: “I don’t know anything. One moment you could be in Africa creating a movie and the next you're somewhere else.” And I replied: “I don’t know. I just get on with it.” I feel that’s quite Phoebe-like, where you don’t know what I’m going to be doing from week to week. Also, my mom routinely sings “Smelly Cat” to me and I don’t know why!