Molly Gordon Gets By With a Little Help From Her Friends (2024)

Molly Gordon remembers the exact moment everything changed for her. She was in New York City, riding the F train, when her phone pinged with an email from her agent. It contained the script for Shiva Baby, an indie film written by Emma Seligman and starring Rachel Sennott, a pair of then-unknown NYU grads who were peddling their first feature. “I remember reading it and being so electrified by how brilliant the writing was,” Gordon says. “I met Emma for coffee and fell in love with her....I’m close friends with both of them now.”

At the time, Gordon had landed some minor roles: Life of the Party, a comedy with Melissa McCarthy, and Animal Kingdom, a dark crime drama on TNT. “Emma and Rachel thought I was a working actor because I didn’t go to college and had done a couple of things,” she says. “I was like, look at these girls just doing it themselves!”

Gordon is one to talk. Last year, at the ripe age of 27, she codirected, coproduced, and acted in the musical comedy Theater Camp. The film “was born out of feeling like I wasn’t being seen for the batsh*t silly roles,” Gordon says. She plays Rebecca-Diane, a longtime staff member at the fictional AdirondACTS camp in upstate New York who has aspirations of becoming a cruise ship performer. Many of the characters were partly inspired by her own prepubescent experiences at camp with her childhood friend, Ben Platt, whom she admits having had a huge crush on. (He’s now engaged to their mutual friend and co-star, Noah Galvin.) “Friendship love is just as important as romantic love,” Gordon muses. “My relationship with Ben is one of the great loves of my life. Though he doesn’t want to sleep with me romantically, we still have an intimacy that’s very powerful.”

For Gordon, born in Los Angeles to director Bryan Gordon (Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, Weeds) and director, producer, and screenwriter Jessie Nelson (who co-wrote Stepmom and directed I Am Sam), comedy was her “religion” growing up. She recalls being raised on Robert Altman movies and watching The Graduate repeatedly. Even so, her career trajectory wasn’t so clear. “I grew up with a mom as a director and still didn’t believe it could happen for me, because it was so hard for her,” Gordon says. “The statistics are still so low, it’s embarrassing. We need to continue to push for more opportunities.”

She’s certainly making strides. While Gordon was editing Theater Camp, she was offered the role of Claire, Jeremy Allen White’s love interest on FX’s hit series The Bear. Yesterday, the trailer for season 3 dropped—featuring a few glimpses of Gordon’s return to the show. Like the rest of the world, she was already a fan of the chef-focused comedy-drama—and her close friend Ayo Edebiri, in particular. (Sennott introduced the two, and they’re now all part of the same tight-knit group. Another net gain? “Ayo made me incredible caramelized shallot pasta recently,” Gordon says.)

“It still feels so pinch-me that I’m even on the show at all,” says Gordon, who joined the cast in the second season. “To even have played a dishrag would have been crazy, so to play opposite Jeremy was amazing. He is such a good actor. It’s my favorite job I’ve ever had.” One can only imagine it was easy to fake falling in love with White, who cemented his role as the internet’s boyfriend with his shirtless Calvin Klein underwear campaign that all but broke the internet. “I mean, I went to a yoga class several weeks ago and I’m still tired from that,” she jokingly says about the thirst-trap ad, before adding: “I think what he was able to pull off is incredible. He should be celebrated for that.”

Gordon is breaking into the fashion industry in a slightly more subtle way. Thanks in large part to her stylist Jared Ellner, another friend, she’s stepped out in looks by Valentino, Miu Miu, Chanel, and Khaite. At Proenza Schouler’s New York Fashion Week show in September, she sat front row with Seligman, Sennott, Edebiri, and Chase Sui Wonders—a cool-girl collective that prompted more headlines than the collection itself. “It’s not like there’s a narrative being thrust upon us that we’re friends—these are actually my really good friends. I can call one of them and be like, ‘What do I do?’ or ‘Have you worked for this person?’ Having these women to lean on has really been such an important part of my journey.”

As for what’s next, “I’m trying to manifest more of the good,” Gordon says. “I’ve met a lot of really good people, so I want to continue to be surrounded by that kind of energy.” And beyond that, she adds, “I think Ayo said it perfectly: ‘I’m just trying to pay my rent.’”

Hair by Anton Alexander for Kérastase; makeup by Grace Ahn at Day One; manicure by Merrick Fisher and Naoko Saita at Opus Beauty; produced by Production Partners; photographed on location at The Hollywood Roosevelt.

A version of this article appears in the June/July 2024 issue of ELLE.

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