Private Project

Ladylike

Two young society women disguise themselves as men to sneak into a gentlemen-only club to meet their hero, Sarah Bernhardt, on her 1911 visit to New York City. Inspired by a true event.

  • Taylor Coriell
    Director
    Thank You Places, Adulting With Jane, Step Into My Office, The Maples, Run Ins, Til Death Do Us Part
  • Taylor Coriell
    Writer
    Ladylike, Superhuman Public Radio, Adulting With Jane, You're The Pest
  • Lauren Sowa
    Producer
    Marisol, Proxy
  • Madison Hatfield
    Producer
    The Sky Blues, I Could Dom, Courtney Gets Possessed, Jenna Gets An Abortion, Pageant Material, Post Citrus
  • Caroline Mariko Stucky
    Producer
    Prismism, Regarding Us, Stag
  • Lauren Sowa
    Key Cast
    "Olivia"
    FBI, Terrifier 3, The Plot Against America
  • Kimberly Chatterjee
    Key Cast
    "Lucille"
    High Maintenance, Dance Nation, Kate Hamill's Pride & Prejudice
  • Jackie Hoffman
    Key Cast
    "Sarah Bernhardt"
    Only Murders In The Building, Glass Onion, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Garden State, Shiva Baby
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    comedy
  • Runtime:
    14 minutes 58 seconds
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Taylor Coriell

A redhead who hails from Kentucky, Taylor Coriell is a bicoastal writer & director, addicted to stories about the people and places that make you feel at home with yourself, through the lens of ladycentric dramedies, buddy comedies, and rom coms.

A Black List Recommended writer, Taylor was in the Top 15% for the Nicholl Fellowship 2022, a Finalist for the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship 2022, Atlanta Film Festival's 2022 TV pilot competition & Catalyst Content Festival's 2019 Live Pitch Competition, and a Semifinalist for Script Pipeline's 2021 TV pilot competition, Screencraft’s 2022 Diverse Voices Lab, & the 2017 & 2018 Sundance New Voices Labs. She was most recently featured on The Stunt List x The Naughty List 2023!

A former figure skater, recovering opera singer, and full-time pal, Taylor would love to talk about your favorite period piece, whether or not LA can one day provide her with a *actual* bagel, or even hear if you have a theory about why Barack Obama follows her on Twitter (yes, still).

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

When I visited the Players Club for a mixer in pre-Covid 2020, I first heard the story of the “Sarah Bernhardt Room”. “The Divine Sarah” was one of the world’s first international superstars, and in 1911, on a tour to the US, she was granted special permission by the members of the gentlemen-only Players Club in NYC for one night only to visit the club. Upon arrival, she boarded the elevator– and got stuck there for about an hour. When the fire brigade finally released her, she was so angry, she stormed from the club, never to return. The club has affectionately called the elevator, “The Sarah Bernhardt Room” ever since.

The story was so funny to me, and a fascinating time capsule of the period. Things for women were changing so much then, and yet, not at all. From there, the idea of two besties going on an adventure to meet their hero at her Taylor-Swift-level of megastardom seemed only natural– but what could two such women, constrained by the expectations of their gender at that time, take away from spending an evening breaking out of them? What sort of innate power can we all find when we release ourselves from the rigid expectations of the gender binary?

Through the lens of an effervescent, joyful buddy comedy, Ladylike stimulates our cultural conversation about gender expression & performance, and the ways we can empower each other by letting our friends be their authentic selves. With influences like the mission-driven buddy comedy Booksmart, the classic period piece A Room With A View, and the more modern take on a literary masterpiece The Personal History of David Copperfield, the film weaves a contemporary aesthetic into the audio-visual fabric of the film to connect this early-20th century story more viscerally with a 21st century audience.