From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment, the Home Edition. I'm Elvis Mitchell.

It's been a while since we last spoke to our guest director, Ryan Rousseau Young,

was, I guess, for her film Before I Fall. She's back with the HBO docu-series, Nuclear Family,

which brings in mind so many of the things we talked about the last time you were here,

Ryb. What's really interesting in watching this

docu-series is watching the emergence of you as a filmmaker as a, probably as a teenager,

with your high-eight camera. Yes. I mean, I started, even before I picked up a high-eight camera,

you know, I was the kid who was five years old telling everybody to get naked and put on costumes and telling everyone where to stand and dragging whoever I could into these elaborate pretend make-believe games.

I guess before we get going here, we should, I'd give you a chance to let the audience know what

nuclear family is about.

So nuclear family is about my lesbian moms being sued by my known sperm donor when I was

nine years old. That's the short version. The longer version is it's sort of about

also me wrestling with that event in my life and coming to peace with it. In watching this, I'm just

aware of all the things we talked about when you were first here.

This idea of a young person sort of coming into awareness of the world around her and trying to figure out what it's like, realizing that the power with her really rests in her, having some understanding of herself.

And I just remember we were talking about how even when your characters were in repose,

they seemed like the weight of the world was on their shoulders.

And my gosh, right, there's so many times we see this in this series.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, what we talked about on the last time I was on here, I was

floored by how astute you were. And I think I was almost hadn't quite realized, not that I was

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