LOS ANGELES, June 6 (UPI) -- Kyra Sedgwick says her comedy Bad Shabbos, in theaters now, holds a relevant message about making time for family. She plays Ellen, a mother hosting a Friday night Shabbat dinner for her family and future in-laws, in the new film.
The dinner goes comically awry, but Sedgwick said families should prioritize making time for each other. In a recent phone interview with UPI, the actress, 59, said her family does not allow phones during meals.
"That's a really good habit to get into with your family and your kids," the star said. "It's the time to really download about the day and let people be reminded about what's important but also to be like, 'You're a priority for me. I'm going to hold space for this and hold space for you.'"
The family in Bad Shabbos follows Jewish traditions, such not driving on the sabbath and not using modern technology like cell phones. Sedgwick, who is married to actor Kevin Bacon and mother to Sosie and Travis Bacon, said taking a break from phones is a good idea regardless of religion.
"I just don't think that our nervous system is set up for it and I think we're really hurting our bodies with the amount of connection to moment-by-moment news," she said. "Remember that family comes first, that we have our priorities but connection and being a human being is better than being a human doing."
Sedgwick has been acting since she was a teenager herself on the soap opera Another World. She sees her early roles still impact audiences despite preceding modern technology.
For example, 1992's Singles, Cameron Crowe's second movie as director, is about men and women in their 20s living in a Seattle apartment complex looking for love.
"Twentysomethings come up to me now and say, 'I just saw Singles and it's exactly like my life,'" she said. "Even without the social media piece, [Crowe] still was able to tap into some core feelings of what it is to be in your 20s, looking for love and connection."
Now that Sedgwick has a family of her own, other aspects of Bad Shabbos became relevant too. Ellen's daughter, Abby (Milana Vayntrub), accuses Ellen of making a face when Abby shares news of her life.
"My daughter is constantly thinking I'm making faces so she's probably right," Sedgwick said. "I think that we think we're better actors than we are with our kids and I think they see right through it."
The way Ellen treats her three children also demonstrates the different relationships between family members. Ellen struggles to be polite to her David's (Jon Bass) non-Jewish fiance, Meg (Meghan Leathers), while she gushes over her other son, Adam (Theo Taplitz), a loner who dreams of joining the Israel Defense Forces. The family lives in New York.
"Everyone plays a role in a family," Sedgwick said. "Someone needs a little bit more of the gentle mom and someone else needs to be pushed a little bit more. Someone else needs to be given the benefit of the doubt. Some people don't."
Sedgwick's own mother, Patricia Rosenwald, was Jewish and married art dealer Ben Heller. Sedgwick said her stepfather introduced Passover seders into their family, but they still celebrated Christmas instead of Hanukkah.
"My connection with Judaism is really my ethics, my ethical culture," she said. "I really don't know very much about the religion at all but I do know you're allowed to question things. It's not just because God says so. The Torah is all about asking questions and having conversation. I think that it felt like a spiritual connection for me in that way."
Another one of Sedgwick's earlier movies speaks to spiritual healing. In Heart and Souls, she plays a ghost who died before accepting her fiance's proposal. Through a living man (Robert Downey, Jr.), she and three other ghosts are able to correct their mistakes.
"I think the idea of being able to make amends and go back and fix things feels really good to me, and is a universal thing that we can all be aspirational about," she said.
Sedgwick is currently in production on a movie with her own family. Family Movie stars Kevin, Kyra, Sosie and Travis as a family of filmmakers, though they are not playing the Bacons.
"We're definitely playing characters, but they may or may not have a certain meta aspect to them," she said.
Kevin and Sedgwick initiated the idea of making a movie as a family. The couple took four pitches and Dan Beers was hired to write the script.
Sedgwick said the inspiration for a project with the entire family came from making the short film Until at home during COVID-19 lockdowns. Released in 2022, Kevin and Sedgwick directed Until and Travis composed the music for it.
"We're definitely both workaholics and we wanted to keep creating," she said. "We thought maybe we could do something together with the whole family."
