If you’re wondering what members of the French 75 chat about when they’re not breaking immigrants out of detainment centers or robbing banks, the answer is astrology. Or at least that’s what the cast of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” discussed in between firing prop machine guns and driving getaway cars in the vigilante thriller.
“We were all of us just there, chatting up in between takes, talking about astrology, talking about full moons,” Shayna McHayle, who plays French 75 member Junglepussy, told IndieWire. “Teyana [Taylor] was saying something about Scorpios, and I’m like, ‘I’m a Scorpio,’ and Leo[nardo DiCaprio]’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m a Scorpio.’ It was this whole thing.”
For McHayle, spending time on the set of a blockbuster action film with A-list talent was quite surreal, and not something she sought out, but the experience was “written in the stars.” While she’s previously appeared in two films, 2018’s “Support the Girls” and 2023’s “The Perfect Find,” she’s predominantly a musician who raps under the stage name Junglepussy. After Anderson saw her on tour with Tame Impala in 2022, however, he was so inspired that he created a character, also named Junglepussy, just for McHayle.
“My agent reached out to me like, ‘Paul Thomas Anderson wants your number. Can I give it to him?’ He wants to talk to you directly,” McHayle said. “I was like, ‘Who? OK, yeah, give him my number.’”
The pair then met several times in New York City over the next few years, with Anderson telling McHayle he was crafting a far-left vigilante based on her stage persona.
“I didn’t know that it was like Junglepussy for real until it really got close to locking in,” McHayle said. “He gave me a hard copy of the script, and when I read it, I was like, ‘What the…? What is this?’ When I saw my name in there, and I saw my lyrics in there, and I just saw all these pussy references, I was gagged.”
Even before shooting, however, astrology was a key topic of conversation. “Teyana’s a Sag. Regina [Hall]’s a Sag. Alana [Haim]’s a Sag,” McHayle said. “One day, me and Paul were texting before we started filming, and he thought I was a Sag too. He’s like, ‘Yeah, you know I got all these badass Sagittarius women in the French 75,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m a Scorpio.’ He was like, ‘OK, you’re fired.’”
After reading the “One Battle After Another” script, however, McHayle asked Anderson to make some changes to her character. “He’s writing and directing, so he wants to control everything,” she said, “But I was just like, ‘Paul, I am Junglepussy. This is me. I have to be Junglepussy after this movie. I was Junglepussy before this movie, and while I love the collaboration here that you’re cooking up, I still have some non-negotiables.’ There were things that I was like, ‘OK, hard no on this. Junglepussy would never, like ever.’”
Crafting a character that was a mix of her real-life persona and a fictional French 75 radical required some nuance from McHayle as an actor. “Because he reached out to me directly, and was so inspired by my music, even ‘This pussy don’t pop for you,’ having it like as a sign in the movie, which is how I’ve been performing it for the past decade, I knew there were a lot of things that he was drawn to, and I wanted to keep that part of me alive in the role,” she said. “But I also wanted to do some things that I wouldn’t usually do, like shooting a machine gun out of a moving vehicle, like robbing a bank.”
McHayle channeled her stage persona while filming, especially during her instantly iconic bank robbery monologue. Walking across the tellers’ counter amid the chaos of a stick-up, McHayle delivers a speech that serves both as a mission statement for the French 75 as well as a nod to Junglepussy’s work. It’s here that she tells the world, “This pussy don’t pop for you.” But filming in front of the entire cast and crew was daunting.
“That day, I just had to channel the same energy I bring to the stage whenever I do a big show,” she said. “I just had to channel that energy and do my thing.”
McHayle is “still gagged” at the magnitude of the film, and the stunts in particular. “The stunts were scary,” she said, laughing, “Like the car chase scene, we were in the vehicles, like we were in it. When the minivan takes that hard left, we were in it…I’m not even, like, a rollercoaster kind of girl. I prefer a ride over a rollercoaster, but this was like a rollercoaster ride from hell.”
“I know Warner Brothers didn’t want to get in trouble with me,” she added about the movie’s safety protocols. “I just had to let go and trust they knew what they were doing, because they know they have to keep us safe.”
While “One Battle After Another” may only be McHayle’s third movie, it’s her second working with Regina Hall, whom she acted alongside in “Support the Girls,” where they both played employees of a Hooters-esque establishment called Double Whammies. McHayle described the reunion as “a dream.”
“She is such a calming force,” McHayle gushes, “The role she plays as Deandra [in ‘One Battle After Another’] is just like steady, grounded. That’s the literal energy she gives me when we work together on set. I just feel super calm around her. She’s an OG, like that’s my girl, just big sis vibes, like just super nurturing. I’m just like, ‘Girl, I can’t believe this is my second movie with you.’ Love her for life.”
McHayle is now manifesting a third Regina Hall collab and one “with more screentime for both of us.” She’s also rooting for Hall to earn an Oscar for her performance. “She is truly such a force,” McHayle said. “I need her getting that Oscar. No pressure, but I want her to have it.”
After filming wrapped in early 2024, McHayle had to wait patiently for over a year before she finally got to watch “One Battle After Another.” She was invited to a private screening at the IMAX theater at New York’s Lincoln Square AMC for a morning viewing. “It was like me and some of the Christmas Adventurers, Tony Goldwyn and them,” she said. “We’re in this big-ass theater, and everybody’s in their own row and taking it all in.”
McHayle brought a coffee and a croissant and, during her first watch, was mostly just assessing how much of her work made the final cut. “I was there ticking my boxes,” she said. “Like I know what I did, and I know what I didn’t do. Now let’s see what’s in here. When I saw all the pieces just remained, I was like, ‘Oh, Paul is a real one. He was serious,’ because you never know for real until it’s done.”
Since her first screening, where she admitted to being “over-caffeinated” and “overstimulated,” she’s seen the movie five more times, including in VistaVision. She’s still “gagged” by the whole process, and knows there will be more to come.
“For some reason, whenever I do me, do my music, make my art, I’m attracting these opportunities,” she said. “I’m just staying super open to expanding my acting career, because it’s obviously something I can’t run from, hide from, like it just keeps popping up. I am going to surrender to the process and to the full spectrum of my gifts, my artistry, and just keep being me.”
Hopefully, that means Shayna McHayle x Regina Hall 3.0 in the near future.
“One Battle After Another” is now in theaters from Warner Bros. Pictures.