Julia Fox says sport is the ‘only place men feel like women’

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‘Sports is the only place where men kind of get to feel what it’s like to be a woman,’ Julia Fox tells me.

‘You’re on a clock, you have an expiration date, you’re only good for a certain amount of time. And there’s something to be said about that.’

It’s a provocative observation and perfectly in character for Fox, who has made a career out of holding a mirror to modern culture’s contradictions. 

But here, she’s not talking about Instagram aesthetics or celebrity gossip; she’s talking about HIM, the new horror-thriller directed by Justin Tipping and set in the brutal, body-obsessed world of American football.

The film stars Fox alongside Marlon Wayans and Tyriq Withers in a story that fuses sports melodrama, psychological horror, and erotic psychodrama. 

While marketed as a ‘sports horror,’ the movie is less about football itself than the culture orbiting it. It explores masculinity under pressure, the commodification of Black bodies, and the strange, contradictory desire to be both idolised and devoured by an audience.

Fox said men experience some of what it’s like to be a woman when they play sports (Picture: PMA Film & TV) She said: ‘You’re on a clock, you have an expiration date, you’re only good for a certain amount of time.’ (Picture: PMA Film & TV)

In HIM, men’s bodies are as exposed as women’s usually are. Uniforms cling, sweat glistens, muscles are lit and framed almost pornographically. 

For Tyriq Withers, who plays Cam, that visibility was part of the challenge: ‘My cheeks are on camera,’ he laughs. 

‘But I think that’s the gift of being an actor, you suffer so that other people can feel seen and suffer less.’ Preparing for the role meant putting his body through intense routines in order to have the physique of an NFL star. 

He reflects: ‘It was difficult, but satisfying. It taught me about my mental and psychological capacity too.’

The film features a lot of memorable imagery (Picture: AP) Marlon Wayans, left, and Tyriq Withers both have startlingly muscular physiques in the film (Picture: AP)

Wayans, who has been both a comedic and dramatic actor across a long career, frames it in more spiritual terms: ‘Let the body lead and the spirit follows. You’re actually chiselling your spirit when you’re chiselling your body for a role like this.’ 

That convergence—body as commodity, body as prison, body as gateway to selfhood—is what gives the film its horror. 

For Fox, the connection to women’s experience is obvious: ‘Your body is only good for a limited time, and once it changes, you’re out.’ In sports, she suggests, men finally feel that ticking clock too.

Fox’s own presence in the film plays with that very dynamic. Known as much for her cultural persona as for her acting, she admits she initially wanted to transform into a stereotypical WAG (wife and girlfriend of a footballer): ‘spray tan, different hair, different eyebrows,’ she explains. 

Director Justin Tipping refused: ‘“Just stay exactly as you are”.’

Fox is known as much for her cultural persona as for her acting (Picture: Leon Bennett/Getty Images for Universal Pictures) Withers played football in college in real life (Picture: Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

The effect is uncanny: Fox is both herself and not herself, her fashion-forward costuming (‘The finale dress of white chiffon with horns was probably my favourite’) offsetting the hyper-masculine aesthetic of the football world. 

Her body, like those of the athletes onscreen, becomes part of a spectacle, something Fox has experienced countless times in real life. 

The film also refuses to sidestep the racial politics of sports. 

Withers, who is mixed-race, points out that the NFL is overwhelmingly Black, and that Black athletes are under disproportionate scrutiny: ‘I hope people see this movie on different levels. Being black is an honour — we come from greatness.’

Fox interjects that Wayans often says of his experience being Black: ‘He always says: “You also feel you have to be great just to be good.”’

Wayans puts it more bluntly: ‘That’s not just in sports, it’s in everything. Even when you think you’re good enough, the carrot just gets snatched away. But that makes you better. When you finally get the opportunity, you progress at an accelerated pace because you’ve been held back so long.’

The director told Fox ‘Just stay exactly as you are’ (Picture: Universal Studios/Lewis Jacobs. All Rights Reserved) She intitally wanted to ‘transform into a WAG’ (Picture: Universal Studios)

That tension – brilliance cultivated under pressure, then exploited by a system that profits from both performance and collapse – is the real horror HIM dramatises. 

‘Don’t just be a part of the system,’ Wayans insists, saying that is the heart of the ‘Wayans story,’ referencing him and his family’s rise to fame through the Scary Movie franchise and other creative undertaking. ‘Buck the system. Be the system.’

What makes HIM feel so original is the way it welds these commentaries onto horror tropes. The psychosexual triangle between Fox, Wayans, and Withers thrums with erotic tension, insecurity, and competition. The violence of sport bleeds into actual violence. 

And at its heart lies the simple, terrifying question: what does it mean to build your identity on a body that is both worshipped and doomed?

Fox’s initial remark lingers over all of it. In sports, men are treated the way women have always been treated: as consumables, with a short shelf life, their value tied to their bodies. But the film doesn’t simply invert gendered objectification. Instead, it shows that all bodies, in different ways, are caught in the same system of commodification.

That’s what makes HIM unsettling long after its jump scares fade. It’s not just a horror movie about football. It’s a horror movie about capitalism’s hunger for flesh, about the ticking clock on every body, and about what happens when our worth is measured in how long we can keep running before we break.

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