While attending the premiere of “The Diary of A Teenage Girl” at the 37th annual Sundance Film Festival on Jan.
24 in Park City, Utah, sophomore Bridget Wait had a different experience than many. Sharing the screen with actors Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård and Kristen Wiig was her 13 year-old sister Abby Wait.
“I would never think this would have happened,” Bridget Wait said. “I never thought that we would have been at this huge premiere. It was kind of surreal.”
Set in the 1970s, “Diary of a Teenage Girl” is about an adolescent artist living in San Francisco who has an affair with her mother’s boyfriend. Abby plays the teenager’s little sister, Gretel.
While the movie has only been screened at Sundance so far, shortly after the premiere, the film was sold to Sony Picture Classics for $2 million, and should therefore be shown in theaters soon, according to Wait.
“I also thought that it is going to be weird to put into theaters because I think that there’s going to be a lot of controversy about it,” Wait said. “But it was actually a really good movie and once you see it, then it seems more normal.”
Wait said that her parents were worried about what her sister was going to see in the theater because of the intimate nature of the film.
“At first, my parents weren’t even sure if [Abby] was allowed to go to the premiere because it was so controversial,” Wait said.
Wait attended an after-party after the premiere.
“There were all the actors and the cast,” Wait said. “[Abby] was hanging out with people like Alexander Skarsgård and Kristin Wiig, and [Wiig] was talking to her as if she was a normal person. There were people who wanted to take pictures with [Abby] after the premiere, and it was just weird to see my little sister as a movie star.”
Wait said that her sister has been acting since she was seven. Besides “The Diary of A Teenage Girl,” Abby has done a couple of student films and was an extra in“Contagion.”
“I think [acting] is her biggest dream,” Wait said. “She talks about it a lot. I think [being an actor] is her one major career goal, and I’m really proud of her for that.”
