Cathy Schulman says getting into the movie business was a “bit of an accident.” It was a time before studying cinema was recognized as a fine art, so she was a playwrighting major at Yale. Then someone told her she would average about $1,500 for her plays. Concerned if she could support herself, she was advised to look into the movie business. “I said, ‘What’s that?’” Schulman, now the CEO and president of Welle Entertainment, recalls. “And the next thing you knew, I was in an interview, and I was hired to work on a set, and the rest is history.”
The movie was “Blue Steel,” and the then 22-year-old Schulman was excited to see the film was being directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow. (She didn’t know it would be another 20 years before she worked with a female director.) From those humble beginnings, Schulman would go on to enormous success with a wide range of projects, from “The Edge of Seventeen” to “The Illusionist” to winning the Academy Award for producing “Crash.”

Her latest is “The Idea of You,” based on the novel by Robinne Lee about the relationship between single mother Solène (Anne Hathaway) and boy band star Hayes (Nicholas Galitzine.) A single mother who recently turned 40, Solène has a chance to meet with the 24-year-old singer and their chemistry is instantaneous. But more than that, the two have a true connection they want to explore. But the public response — and even that of people in their own lives — complicates matters.

I’m fascinated by the Taylor Swift phenomenon, I’m a huge fan, and in “Lavender Haze” she has the lyrics “the only kind of girl they see, is a one-night or a wife.” And Taylor Swift is someone who has shared every stage of her life with her fans — we have seen her through these stages. And I liked the idea that you could take an actor that generations have grown up with and she would let us in for this maturation event — a divorce and self-realization and a new life. I knew she’d be the right actress to walk us through this investigation.

Michael Showalter directed and co-wrote (with Jennifer Westfeldt) the anticipated film, which set SXSW buzzing last month. Amazon MGM Studios will release “The Idea of You” via Prime Video on May 2.

I know producers can be versatile like actors, but looking at your list of movies, I don’t know that I could nail a specific theme that unites them all, outside of quality.
There is a trend and I know this because I recently had to teach my work. And it was strange to study what you’ve done and sort of see what I was thinking. But the throughline is race, class, and gender. Everything deals with one of those three things.

Movies like “Crash” and “Darfur Now” about obviously about diversity and obstacles people face because of race or class. But I can go back to “Bad Moms” and remember thinking, “We need to make a movie about how it’s OK to be a mom that doesn’t succeed 100% at bake sales.” Or “The Edge of Seventeen” and thinking about the importance of being a girl growing into womanhood who doesn’t feel that she wants to focus on the internet. Or “The Woman King,” showing we can be a warrior and a mother. Or with “The Idea of You,” we’re really questioning the compartmentalization of women — you can only be a mother or you can only be a wife and you can’t have a 𝓈ℯ𝓍ual life after 40. All these things connected to me. But mostly I like to make entertaining films that also make us ask these kinds of questions.