NETFLIX SORTED US all out with plenty to watch over the Christmas holidays this year, and one of the main highlights was a new film called Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock and Moonlight actor Trevante Rhodes. 

It’s an action packed post-apocalyptic thriller about a woman and her two children, who need to wear blindfolds to avoid supernatural entities that take the appearance of their victims’ worst fears, regrets and losses, or else they’ll be driven to the point of madness and take their own lives. 

If you have ever met an actual human child, you’ll know it’s ridiculously hard to get them to do what you want them to do. They can’t even keep their shoes on half the time, never mind a blindfold which they probably consider far less necessary than a pair of shoes. So, Sandra Bullock’s character was fairly stressed out trying to keep her children blindfolded to protect them, and as a result she shouted at them a lot during the film, which made the tension palpable. 

For the last few weeks, Sandra has been promoting the film on the usual American chat-shows and was repeatedly asked how she didn’t feel awful about screaming at a pair of innocent, young kids. On Ellen, she said: 

Actually, it was really easy. You never let yourself get to that place unless you’re really scared, y’know if your child runs out into the street you’re not like “Get back here”, you go, “WHAT THE F**K ARE YOU DOING? GET OVER HERE!” But you usually don’t get to that place because there are other people watching, so you’re like [through gritted teeth] “Get back here!” So, you got to be those things that you aren’t allowed to be when you’re really, really scared. 

In Sandra’s latest interview, which was published by Variety yesterday, she said that it was difficult to think of children dying all day at work, but it helped her get it out of her system and relax a little bit when it was time to go home. 

You have to stay there for fifteen hours a day, imagine your family dying, imagine your children dying, imagine the love of your life dying. By the time I went home at the end of the day, I was so grateful that I didn’t have to think those horrible thoughts that I think every day as a mother, out of general fear. It was cathartic. I got to purge them. I got to go home, I think my kids liked me better because I wasn’t so scared and militant and fearful. I’m back now! I’m back to that person. 

Sandra said that as a mother, she thinks those things constantly and she can’t help it. 

I have two children who are African American and I have to have a conversation with them that millions of parents do, but I have to balance it with ugly truth and the beauty truth. 

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