It was the piece of fiction heard round the net. This October, it jumped off the medium-sized screens and headed to the big screen.
"Cat Person," the new film based on the short story by Kristen Roupenian, is reviving the discourse that took over the internet five years ago. The movie stars Nicholas Braun ("Succession"), and Emilia Jones ("CODA"), and is tense, intriguing and verging on horror.
But what is "Cat Person"? Why did it go so viral in 2017? Will the movie adaptation do the same? Here's your refresher on the story that led to a thousand takes, with commentary from director Susanna Fogel.
What is 'Cat Person?
Kristen Roupenian's short story "Cat Person" was published by The New Yorker in December 2017. Immediately viral, the story was The New Yorker’s second most-read story that year. Author Roupenian went on to garner a two-book deal.
The story follows Margot, a 20-year-old college student, who meets a 34-year-old man named Robert while working at the local movie theater.
Margot and Robert's relationship deepens and develops. So does their power dynamic. When they finally sleep together, Margot is repulsed by the reality of Robert, compared to the fantasy of him she's built up over spirited text exchanges.
"She thought, brightly, This is the worst life decision I have ever made! And she marvelled at herself for a while, at the mystery of this person who’d just done this bizarre, inexplicable thing."
She invents an imaginary boyfriend to distance herself from the reality of her feelings for Robert. With the help of her roommate, she breaks things off via text. Robert sees her a month later a bar and sends a string of angry texts, culminating in him calling her a derogatory word.
Their relationship surfaces issues of power, sex, gender privilege and more among readers, leading to takes and think pieces.
“It’s the story that in a weird way, won’t stop generating conversation even when we, might have wanted it to," says Fogel.
Why did 'Cat Person' go so viral in 2017?
The story was published in 2017, the same year the #MeToo movement started conversations around many shades of assault, from overt instances to lingering breaches of trust to bad dates, like the one that happens in "Cat Person."
“The thought of what it would take to stop what she had set in motion was overwhelming,” Roupenian writes of Margot following Robert to the bedroom. “It would require an amount of tact and gentleness that she felt was impossible to summon.”
It seemed the entire internet had an opinion when it came to "Cat Person." People debated just about every aspect of the story. Was Margot the hero? Was she a villain? Was she likable? What about Robert's role?
Some women said the story was relatable, especially when it came to Margot's blend of fear and attraction, and her worry of what might happen if she turned Robert down. Men had reactions of their own — enough to fuel an entire X account and articles.
The questions led to think pieces, which situated “Cat Person” in the ongoing cultural dialogue about women, privilege and intersectionality.
“Much of the discomfort and controversy swirls around the character of Margot and all that she represents: a white, college-educated, straight, relatively thin young woman. She’s both a figure of enormous privilege and a figure who is disempowered, and most of the discourse about the story has focused on trying to figure out exactly where she stands,” Constance Grady wrote for Vox.
Fogel was struck by the story's very existence — that a piece of work highlighting a young woman's perspective would be in The New Yorker.
"I was surprised that anything that felt like it was about a young girl's experience dating, in what seemed to be a pretty realistic way, was featured in (The New Yorker)," Fogel says. "I say this as a person who has a huge respect for the magazine, but young female stories are not usually elevated into the mainstream literary conversation in that way."
No matter the conversation, people were talking, and that's what drew Fogel in further.
"At first, it was just reading this incredible story, but also it was the narrative that came from the cultural impact of it," she says.
"The fact that people were so divided about it, it was almost like that 'Is the dress blue? Or is it gold?' thing," says Fogel. "It just was inviting people to put all of their own s--- into their reading of this."
Why did 'Cat Person' go viral again in 2021?
"Cat Person" set off another debate four years after is publication — this time, about fiction, autofiction, inspiration via Instagram stalking, and whose stories a writer is entitled to tell.
A woman named Alexis Nowicki wrote an essay for Slate in 2021 saying she noticed "eerie similarities" between her life and the scenario laid out in "Cat Person."
"The protagonist was a girl from my small hometown who lived in the dorms at my college and worked at the art house theater where I’d worked and dated a man in his 30s, as I had. I recognized the man in the story, too. His appearance (tall, slightly overweight, with a tattoo on his shoulder). His attire (rabbit fur hat, vintage coat). His home (fairy lights over the porch, a large board game collection, framed posters). It was a vivid description of Charles. But that felt impossible. Could it be a wild coincidence? Or did Roupenian, a person I’d never met, somehow know about me?" Nowicki writes.
Nowicki writes that she contacted Roupenian, who confirmed she knew "Charles," the pseudonym for Nowicki's ex-boyfriend who was the inspiration for Robert.
Roupenian responded in an email to Nowicki included in the Slate piece. Roupenian wrote she learned "from social media" that Charles had a "much younger girlfriend," and garnered some other biographical details about Nowicki.
"Using those facts as a jumping-off point, I then wrote a story that was primarily a work of the imagination, but which also drew on my own personal experiences, both past and present. In retrospect, I was wrong not to go back and remove those biographical details, especially the name of the town. Not doing so was careless," Roupenian wrote in the email.
Roupenian previously denied that the story was autobiographical. "It’s not autobiographical; though many of the details and emotional notes come from life,” she told the New York Times in 2017.
Nowicki declined to comment to TODAY.com.
How does the movie 'Cat Person' compare to the story?
The movie expands the premise to create fuel a feature-length film. Many lines of the script are taken directly from the story itself, crafted by screenwriter Michelle Ashford.
Ashford sets the tone of the movie with a Margaret Atwood quote: "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."
The original piece in The New Yorker tells the story from Margot's perspective, but Fogel wanted to bring the story to a wider base.
"There’s one way to do an adaptation, which is this that you service the fan base, and you try to just literally adapt the story," Fogel says.
"If we had made a very internal story that lived and died in Margot’s head ... I don’t know a lot of men who would go to that movie, just because of the double standards. That’s not how the film economy is driven," she says.
So for Fogel, it was important to bring Robert's perspective to the fore.
"Even if you’re not equally sympathizing with both sides, I think it’s necessary to engage men in seeing this movie in this form," says Fogel. "Women’s stories are often just for women in the culture, and they shouldn’t be. But the more we could make Robert a person with interiority and dimensionality, even if he does toxic things, the more it’s a way in for a male audience."
Fogel says some people might not be comfortable watching the film — but that's the point.
She's looking forward to the discussion starting up again.
"The movie (now) belongs to the people seeing the movie. And I’ve lost control of the narrative because I finished it. So it’s for you to have now."