Welcome to my new column, Pretty Interesting! Capsule has given me the opportunity to write about some truly epic humans I have met who march to the beat of their own drum and who have genuinely inspired me recently.
I feel oddly proud that I have mended my algorithm enough to no longer be force-fed a constant stream of negative news and collective trauma when I scroll. There is a privilege in protecting your mental health this way, even if it means remaining a little ignorant to certain things. And yet, if I am honest, a lot of feel good stories can lack the punch to really hold my attention. There is a strange duality in wanting something juicy and compelling without feeling like you are reading a glossy puff piece.
This column is my attempt to sit right in that tension – human, honest and a little sharp around the edges.
You can read the first column – a chat with Kiwi writer/director Taylor Nixon here. And, in the second column I chatted with restauranter, Michael Dearth. This week, I chat to writer/director Rachel Ross.
I met Rachel Ross in a slightly unconventional way. She asked me to audition to play her.
Now, I’ve auditioned for a lot of roles in my life, but this one stood out immediately. A few pages into the script, the lead character shits herself, and I had to laugh. I remember thinking, is this why she called me in? A subtle nod, perhaps, to my own very public oversharing about prolapse? It felt niche, specific, and oddly aligned.
But as I kept reading, something shifted.
The humor stayed, but underneath it was something far more layered. Honest, uncomfortable, necessary. What became very clear, very quickly, was that Rachel is a great writer. Not just technically, but in that way where you feel like someone has reached into a very real, very hidden part of life and translated it onto the page with precision and care.
It also became clear how rare it is to see women’s health portrayed like this. Not polished or romanticized or reduced to a storyline sitting quietly in the background, but front and center, messy, complex, and deeply human. And by the time I finished reading, I knew I didn’t just want to be part of this project, I needed to be.
Like most things I want in life, I pursued it. Persistently, enthusiastically, possibly a little intensely. If there’s a closed door, I’ll find a window. If there’s no window, I’ll build one. I don’t always recommend this approach, but it has served me well.
Luckily for me, Rachel didn’t just let me in, she welcomed me.
What’s unfolded since is both a creative collaboration and a friendship, built on shared values, similar wiring, and a mutual understanding of things like codependency, perfectionism, and that subtle feeling of having grown up just a little too fast. After swapping reels back and forth on exactly those topics, I felt deeply aligned with her. There’s something about meeting someone and realizing you’ve been asking similar questions about life, just in different rooms.
So I wanted to introduce you to her, because Rachel Ross is, without question, pretty interesting.
Rachel’s journey to New York City started, like many good stories, with a leap of faith.
“I first came to New York in 2017 thanks to the New Zealand Film Commission,” she tells me. “I fell in love with the city and all its chaos. I always hoped I’d find my way back.” There’s something romantic about that kind of pull, the feeling that a place has something for you before you even fully understand what that is.
She did find her way back, but not without a series of life moments that feel almost cinematic in themselves. “Around the same time, I was accepted into a free, revolutionary clinical trial for my ulcerative colitis. My UC was in a really bad way, and we couldn’t afford healthcare in New York, so this year long trial with access to some of the best doctors in the city felt like an answer to prayer.”
“We moved into a tiny studio apartment, and the very next day I was in surgery in Upper Manhattan. I remember waking up in recovery to the sound of sirens outside the window and thinking, well… this already feels like a movie. I think I’ll turn it into one.”
That instinct, to take something difficult and shape it into story, feels very central to who she is.
Rachel grew up in New Zealand, where her creative journey began early and unfolded quickly.
“I went to film school in 2011 and jumped straight into making short films. I made three in fairly quick succession. Two I funded entirely myself, and the third was supported by the New Zealand Film Commission. I was being selected for labs, surrounded by talented friends and collaborators, and I really felt like I was in my lane creatively.”
But life expanded that lane. Covid arrived, she met the love of her life, and that love lived in Australia. “So in 2021 I moved across the Tasman, and by 2023 we were married.” Australia became a meaningful chapter, but not the final destination. “We were both hungry for a bigger adventure, so we took the plunge and moved to New York City. And now, here we are.”
Interestingly, directing wasn’t always the plan. “I took drama class when I was young because I thought I wanted to act, but every time it came time to perform, I wanted to projectile vomit and run away.” A very clear sign. “Then in high school, there was an opportunity to direct the school play, and I just thought, me. That’s what I want to do. I want to help construct this from the ground up.” She describes feeling an electricity she hadn’t experienced before. “And I no longer wanted to vomit.”
Living in New York has only sharpened that sense of self. “As a chronic people pleaser, this city has taught me so much,” she says. “There’s something incredibly freeing about anonymity. To walk around and know that nobody is looking at you or judging you, because they’ve already seen something far crazier that morning, is truly liberating.”
But she’s honest about the duality. “It’s relentless, loud, chaotic, unforgiving. My husband and I have nearly abandoned this place many times. But because of these opposing forces, it peels back your layers. You can’t fake it here, and I really love it for that.”
That peeling back of layers feels directly connected to the film she’s creating, a project rooted in her lived experience with Ulcerative Colitis and Endometriosis. “Both are chronic, hidden illnesses that have shaped how I move through the world,” she explains. “Living with them means performing wellness while your body wages war in secret.”
It’s a striking way to put it, and one that reveals the emotional core of the story. “It’s a strange kind of invisibility. It’s hard to be believed when you don’t look sick.” That gap between appearing fine and quietly falling apart is where her film lives.
“On average, it takes women seven to ten years to get diagnosed with endometriosis,” she says. “Our pain isn’t taken seriously, so we learn to push through and ultimately second guess ourselves.” Over time, that disconnect doesn’t just live in the mind, it settles into the body. Patterns of pushing through, suppressing, overriding instinct, they don’t just disappear, they embed themselves physically.
When Rachel talks about her personal health journey, it becomes even more confronting. “My periods never felt normal. I would writhe in pain, vomit, nearly faint, but doctors just put me on the pill.” At the same time, she was experiencing severe gastrointestinal symptoms from a young age. “I was told it was IBS, then hemorrhoids.” The pattern is familiar, dismissal, minimisation, delay.
“It wasn’t until 2017, when I was in the United States with extreme rectal blood loss and unbearable abdominal pain, that I finally landed in the emergency room.” What followed was not just a diagnosis, but a realization of how serious things had become. “Had I not gone to the ER that day, I could have died.”
So when Rachel asks why more of these stories aren’t told on screen, her answer is direct. “Because it’s not sexy. Because it’s complex. Because there’s not enough research.” And beneath that, a deeper truth about whose stories are prioritized. “We need more funding, more research, and stronger advocacy coming from within the medical system, not just from patients who are already carrying so much.”
What she’s creating with this film isn’t just a narrative, it’s a form of validation. “I hope it creates a space for women to feel recognized in their medical journeys, while inviting caregivers, partners, and medical professionals to better understand the emotional and physical toll.” There’s a quiet but powerful intention behind it. “I want to contribute to a broader cultural shift toward believing patients, listening to women, and acknowledging the complexity of invisible illness.”
Of course, amidst all of this, there are moments that bring things back to earth. Like the one that, oddly, bonded us quite quickly. Nothing quite connects two people like realizing you’ve both had a close call with publicly pooping yourself.
Rachel shares one of her more recent stories with a kind of resigned humor. “We had just moved to New York and I was in a hardware store when the urge came on suddenly. I asked to use their bathroom, but they didn’t have one. I ran across the street to a Taco Bell, but the bathrooms were out of order.” At this point, it’s a full crisis. “I was a few blocks from our apartment, so I started running, which was a risky move. The more I ran, the more my bowels threatened to unbutton.”
“So I slowed down, practised deep breathing, and literally held my butt to stop anything from coming out. I didn’t care what anyone thought.” She made it home just in time. “Had I not slowed down, I absolutely would have been Maya Rudolph in that scene in Bridesmaids.”
Now, Rachel is stepping into another transformative chapter, pregnancy, and it’s brought its own complexity. “The body carries memories,” she explains. “So when it experiences something similar to a previous traumatic experience, it interprets it as trauma.” For her, many pregnancy symptoms mirrored past health crises. “My body told my brain something is very wrong.”
But this time, it wasn’t. “For the first time in my life, my body was going through something positive, something beautiful, even if it came with uncomfortable symptoms.”
What’s been most revealing, though, is how that healing has evolved. After more than a decade in talk therapy, Rachel realized that while she had done so much work on the psychological side, there was still trauma being held in her body. “I had spent years focusing on the mind, but pregnancy showed me how much my body was still holding onto.”
Now, she’s working in a completely different way. “I’m doing somatic therapy, focusing on the body and training it to feel safe again,” she says. It’s not just a shift, it’s been a breakthrough. “That has been revolutionary for me.”
When I ask what kind of world she hopes her child grows up in, her answer feels both simple and quietly radical. “I’m having a little boy, and I can’t wait to raise him to move through the world with openness and care, to understand what it’s like to be a woman, and to recognize and honor underrepresented communities that are so often overlooked.” She speaks about raising someone who listens, who understands, who stands up for others. “Someone who gives back more than he takes.”
At its core, Rachel’s story, and the story she’s telling through this film, is about trust. “It’s taught me that I always know when something’s off,” she says. “In the past, when someone didn’t validate that, I ignored my instinct. I gaslit myself.” Now, she approaches things differently. “I listen to my body, I care for her, I lean in with compassionate curiosity.”
When I ask her what success looks like, her answer is clear. “People seeing themselves on screen and feeling liberated by that, and making the right people uncomfortable enough to reconsider how they listen.”
We’re currently in the process of bringing this project to life, crowdfunding, building, and backing something that feels genuinely meaningful, and I couldn’t be more proud to be part of it. Because stories like this matter. Because women’s health matters. Because being seen, truly seen, can change everything.
So please enjoy my chat with Rachel Ross. She’s thoughtful, she’s funny, she’s incredibly brave, and she’s pretty interesting.
x