How That Wild Celine Dion Moment Came to Life in ‘Borderline’

Following a movie about a rampaging, coke-fueled bear was never going to be easy, but Cocaine Bear writer Jimmy Warden is giving it his best shot with the comic thriller Borderline (out now), which he also directed. A twisted look at the dark side of fame, it stars Samara Weaving, Warden’s wife, as a Nineties pop star who has to fend off a sociopathic stalker who’s convinced he and the object of his obsession are meant to be married.

“Jimmy’s brain is my favorite thing,” Weaving says. “It’s so absurd and so terrifying.”

Jimmy, was Samara always the person you had in mind to play Sofia?
Jimmy Warden: There was no one else that I wanted to play Sofia. It was written during Covid, so there was an idea that we wanted to shoot something contained. We brought [Margot Robbie’s production company] LuckyChap on board, and they loved the script. So we set out to do boots-on-the-ground filmmaking — low-budget, indie horror comedy. We developed it together. I’m always pitching ideas, and [Sam] is pitching ideas back to me. That’s a lot of what our relationship is — and it’s immensely helpful when you have an actor that’s in the house reading lines.

Samara Weaving:  And it’s so helpful to have a director and a writer to have that perspective!

Were there any notes Samara gave that really changed the shape of the story?
JW: We were always talking about having some compassion for Ray Nicholson’s character, Paul Duerson, by the end. As the scream queen, there’s a role that Sam’s character can play, either angry at Paul, fighting back, or super scared. But Sam gave the note of, “If she’s the comedic foil, or just like the straight man in the scene, it opens us up to feeling like there’s some sympathy or empathy for what he’s going through.” And that was all Sam.

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SW: There was a draft when Sofia hears the news that Duerson escaped [from a mental institution]. The original idea was that she would break down when she heard that. Since she’s a Nineties pop star and has built some walls up to deal with that, it would be interesting if she just kind of accepts it and taps [her bodyguard] Bell on the shoulder. It clicked for me that that’s the core of her personality.

Sofia is a character who’s very much in the public eye. Did any of your own experiences with fame or fans influence your portrayal of her?
SW: I did some research into and watched some documentaries of pop stars of that time. I’m lucky now that we live in an era where people in the public eye have much more agency over their own narrative, whereas 20 or 30 years ago, it was in the hands of the press. I think someone like [Sofia] would had to have built up such a tough exterior, especially a woman at the time. That helped define who Sofia was and how she reacted to a stalker in her house. She would have had to deal with insane men in her industry! 

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Is there a particular pop star you had in mind when writing the film, or, Samara, any artists you were channeling specifically in your performance?
JW:  Madonna, obviously. There are a couple of nods to her in the movie, including the title. To create Sofia, Sam and I created a fake Wikipedia page for who this person is. Even naming all her albums and what that era was for this person. Her name is Sofia Minor. So it was always, like, Minor Crimes and Minors and Misdemeanors. She’s had this bodyguard and been in the public eye since she was 15, and having to deal with the music industry and being objectified, things that all of these stars go through. So it all helped inform that hardened exterior. So, when she’s delivered that news that Duerson has escaped, she’s seen this kind of thing before, whether it’s a fan outside of a concert or someone tailing her on the way home. So she’s not in a full breakdown freak-out. 

SW: It was sort of an amalgam of a few. I watched Madonna’s Truth or Dare, which was really influential. I watched the Amy Winehouse one [Amy]. I looked at Britney Spears. There was a throughline of how much they all had to deal with.

The Madonna song “Borderline” is quite similar to the film, in that the lyrics are creepy, but it’s upbeat and poppy. But if you listen to a cover, like the Flaming Lips one, for example, it’s so much more menacing. 
JW: That Flaming Lips cover is basically the inspiration behind the entire movie. You hear a song and you’re like, “Oh, this is a pop Number One hit.” And then changing the perspective of who is singing just totally changed in my mind what that song was about for me. I just saw scenes of the movie playing out when I listened

to that song. So a lot of the movie was written with it playing.

The Céline Dion moment takes the movie to a whole new level and brings everything together in such a strange, singular way. When writing, was that scene always going to be set to that song?
JW: No, it wasn’t. This part in particular was so anxiety-inducing, because you need to clear the song with the artists before you shoot. You’re usually going through those clearances afterward, in the edit or in post. So we were getting close and we were waiting to hear back [on] another song. Everybody was working on it, sending songs like, “What if it was this? What if it was that?” And then the Céline song came on, and we were like, “That’s even better than anything else. It’s just absolutely perfect.”

So, you fall in love with it. But then you need the artist to clear it. So there’s an anxiety of not having a song, and then once you have the song, that anxiety is ratcheted up to 100, because what if we don’t get it? What if she said no? It’s not a straightforward process. Given what happens in the scene [Weaving laughs], it seems to me that people would say, “Yeah, no. I don’t want people to die to my song.” But whoever it was said yes. We dreamed that it was Céline Dion herself. 

What was the song you originally had planned for the scene?
JW: Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” Sam had a big harmonica solo and everything.

Where the hell did the idea for the scene come from? It’s completely bonkers.
JW: I have to give credit to the producers. I knew I wanted to break out of the reality of the movie and give the audience an opportunity to really laugh. I always second-guess myself. So there were moments where I thought, “Maybe we don’t need that.” You know, we’re a low-budget movie. It’s gonna take a while to shoot, there’s the music clearance process… Everything just seems like such an uphill battle. I had a conversation with one of the producers, Brian Duffield, and he’s like, “What are you talking about? What is the reason that you’re making this movie?” Then once we had that conversation, I was like, “Oh, of course! Screw it. Let’s just go crazy.”

Sofia is initially taken aback by the request to sing. But eventually, she hits a groove and gets swept away by the power of the song. Samara, how did you balance that desire to belt Céline and beat up Penny at the same time?
SW: I thought it would be so funny if [Sofia] was an absolute diva at that moment. On set, I said “Jimmy, I just have to go for it! Can I sweep all the paper off the piano and do a dip on it?” I just thought it was absurd that they’re doing this. So let’s ramp it up to the highest level. There were a few takes where I was a bit more timid, but that scene in itself captures the whole tone of the film. I thought, to channel Céline, “Let’s go for it.” There’s also an element of, is it from Penny’s perspective? It’s a bit of a surrealist piece, too. 

JW: As the scene is written, we’re in and out of Sofia’s POV, as she surveys what she could use as a weapon against Penny while she’s singing. And then Sam said, “No, I think that this might be the last time she’s ever gonna get to sing.”

SW: Sofia fully leans in, even caressing [Penny’s] face. It was so fun.

Samara, you’ve had some experience playing a singer in Chevalier, in which you also lip-synced. There’s a real art form to lip-syncing. How do you perform the song without actually singing it? 
SW:  For Chevalier, I took a lot of singing lessons and learned how to sing in an operatic way. On set, to make it work, you’re singing on top of the backing track, which is terrifying. You sort of learn how that artist or that singer is going to do it, and then you’re trying to copy it as closely as possible so it looks real. 

Is there a particular trick to channel Céline Dion?
SW: I didn’t really think about that that much. I was preoccupied with trying to remember all the words and play the piano. And then I just was like, I’m gonna lean into my 11-year-old self who would be singing in front of my parents, and just going mental.

JW: You can actually play the song now, right? 

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SW: We can, and we can sing it, too! But yeah, I think if I was too in my head about any choices, it would have taken away from the kind of impromptu magic of it. I checked my ego at the door, and I’m just gonna see what happens.

JW: And your face when Alba starts singing! I will just say Sam’s facial expression makes it. That first one, when Alba starts, “There were nights…” just cracks me up. When she made that face, it was an instant “That’s in the movie.”