Here's My Story Of A Fake Kristen Wiig Movie Called 'AbracaDeborah' And Her Being Asked About It On National Television

A few years ago I, accidentally, created a new movie for Kristen Wiig. She wound up having to address this movie that doesn't exist on a late night television show. In fact, the above image is of Kristen Wiig the exact moment she's being asked, "How did the whole AbracaDeborah debacle start?" on Watch What Happens Live. Again, this movie does not exist beyond an errant tweet. I was mortified. The word "debacle" in the question did not help.

This week, Kristen Wiig co-stars in the new Masters of the Universe movie (which I liked a lot), providing the voice of Roboto, a once-great warrior robot who now sweeps floors. This is a weird sentence to write about a He-Man movie, but Roboto does wind up providing one of the most emotional beats in the film. Since Wiig is in an actual real new movie, this seems like a good enough time as any to finally tell the story of her fake movie. (I say "finally," even though this has been written about in the past, it's just that I've never written about it.)

This all started with an innocent enough tweet. I was at the Sundance Film Festival, waiting in line for a movie, having just seen a movie I remember not liking (though, today, I cannot remember what movie it was). According to Letterboxd, I saw four movies that day: Little Men, The Birth of a Nation, Kate Plays Christine, Equity. (For the record: AbracaDeborah is not listed in my diary for that day.) I remember the plot points of only two of these movies. For whatever reason, instead of tweeting about one of those four movies, I sent this instead:

A couple of things: First, I didn't even spell James Marsden's name correctly. Second, I assumed this would be taken as an obvious joke. At the time, I had two running film festival jokes. I had noticed a tendency from people who had just seen a movie they weren't sure about to just say something along the lines of, "Uneven at times, but resonates." This serves as a placeholder that means, "I saw this, but I don't have an opinion yet and my full review could be positive or negative." The other reaction was from people who liked a movie, but didn't know why yet, which would often be tweeted out as, "Still processing ... but wow." So my thought here was to come up with the most ridiculous-sounding fake Sundance title, starring two actors I like, then add the obligatory, "I liked this but I don't know why yet," immediate reaction review.

Six months later, Kristen Wiig is on national television being asked, "How did the whole AbracaDeborah debacle start?" She had quite an answer...

(In a perfect world every post would be free, but I do need to provide posts for the paid members who keep this newsletter a reality. I will tell you this is an almost 2000 word story, so, if you do become a paying member, you aren't being tricked into paying for one more paragraph or something like that.)