Pop Culture Moms · Good Morning America, ABC Audio

Leah McKendrick on egg freezing, the pressure of being a woman, and ‘Scrambled’

·48 min·3 clips

McKendrick says she froze her eggs in 2021 after starting the process at the end of 2020.

Leah McKendrick opens up about Scrambled. She says the film came from her own life as a single woman in her 30s facing the decision of whether to freeze her eggs, and that she wanted to tell a story about buying time instead of trying to get pregnant. The hosts connect with it right away. They talk about how the movie is funny, touching, raw, and honest, and how it turns a deeply personal choice into something that still feels shared because so many women know the pressure around weddings, babies, and bridal showers. Nellie feels very familiar. McKendrick describes her character as broke, single, and 34, moving through friends' milestones while trying to figure out what motherhood should mean for her. The price hits hard. She says egg freezing costs $14,000, and the conversation keeps coming back to the fact that the choice is emotional and financial. That matters in the film. McKendrick explains that she made Nellie a jewelry designer struggling on Etsy, while her own life looked different because she had a filmmaking career and a later script sale that changed her finances. She still remembers the earlier years. She says that if she had needed to freeze her eggs then, she would have had to call her dad, and she knew he would have given her grief about it. Family dynamics shape the movie too. McKendrick says she left her little sister out of the film even though she is one of her biggest champions, because the real support she gets from her would have changed the story's loneliness. Her mother matters as well. She notes that her mom is an ally but an immigrant from Nicaragua, so money and family expectations can land differently across generations. The conversation gets vivid there. McKendrick jokes about her sister being the one who would tell their dad to shut up, and the hosts respond to that mix of love, humor, and frustration. The episode keeps its focus tight. It lands as a candid, emotionally direct conversation about control, timing, and the odd mix of independence and isolation that can come with making this choice.

As heard by us

Egg freezing becomes a funny, personal conversation about money and buying time.

Leah McKendrick's conversation on Pop Culture Moms makes Scrambled feel less like a movie plug and more like a frank look at the decision of if, when, and how to have children.

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Why you'd press play

For when egg freezing feels abstract and you want the human story behind it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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