Zoë Kravitz says society just wasn't ready for a movie titled Pussy Island

Reclaiming a negative image or slur can be a powerful form of solidarity within a group that that word has been used against, but, at least according to Zoë Kravitz, the word “pussy” might take a little longer to get to the empowerment stage. Despite initially giving her directorial debut the title Pussy Island—a name we, obviously, had a bit of fun with—she later changed it to the significantly less edgy Blink Twice.

“It was made very clear to me that ‘pussy’ is a word that we, our society, are not ready to embrace yet,” she recently told Entertainment Weekly, opening up about the name change for the first time. “There were a lot of roadblocks along the way, whether it be the MPAA not wanting to put it on a poster, or a billboard, or a kiosk; movie theaters not wanting to put it on a ticket.”

This marks a notable change of tune from 2022, when the first-time director remained stubbornly committed to using the word. “The title came from that world [of male-dominated industry]. The title is the seed of the story,” she told The Wall Street Journal at the time. “It represents this time where it would be acceptable for a group of men to call a place that, and the illusion that we’re out of that time now.”

However, when Kravitz realized the slur was having the opposite effect, she did something refreshing: she listened. “Interestingly enough, after researching it, women were offended by the word, and women seeing the title were saying, ‘I don’t want to see that movie,’ which is part of the reason I wanted to try and use the word, which is trying to reclaim the word, and not make it something that we’re so uncomfortable using,” she says now. “But we’re not there yet. And I think that’s something I have the responsibility as a filmmaker to listen to. I care about people seeing the film, and I care about how it makes people feel.”