Stuff Mom Never Told You · iHeartPodcasts

Feminist Movie Wednesday: Circle of Friends

March 25, 2026·43 min·3 clips

Samantha explains how Minnie Driver's role as a 'bigger girl' in 'Circle of Friends' challenged 90s beauty standards and became a childhood crush.

Samantha introduces the episode as a delayed 'Whimsical Wednesday' movie pick, explaining that illness and heavy pollen season in the South pushed back recording. She clarifies that listeners should not confuse the 1995 film with a different, darker series currently on Amazon Prime. The 1995 Circle of Friends, adapted from Maeve Binchy's novel with Binchy's involvement in the screenplay, follows Benny and her orphan friend Eve from the small Irish town of Knocklin as they head to college in Dublin in the 1950s. There they reconnect with the beautiful Nan and meet a group of young men including Jack Foley, played by Chris O'Donnell, who becomes Benny's love interest. Samantha notes that Minnie Driver's portrayal of Benny was formative for her as a teenager, particularly because Benny is presented as a larger woman who is loved without needing to change her appearance. The cast also includes Aidan Gillen, Alan Cumming, and Colin Firth in roles the hosts describe as uniformly creepy or morally compromised. Samantha recaps the plot in detail: Benny's father pressures her to consider marrying the sinister Sean, who is also embezzling from the family business; Benny's father dies after an argument, forcing her to leave college temporarily; and Nan, desperate to escape poverty, seduces Jack after becoming pregnant by the wealthy but unavailable Simon Westford. The hosts discuss how the film handles the tension between Catholic religious teaching and adolescent sexuality, with Samantha connecting it to her own Southern Christian upbringing. Annie extends this to the queer experience of internalized conflict. Both hosts praise the film for avoiding the 90s makeover trope, noting that Jack pursues Benny from the start without her changing anything. Samantha criticizes the movie's forgiving ending compared to Binchy's novel, where Benny does not reunite with Jack. The hosts also touch on class dynamics, noting the contrast between the English Westford family's faded wealth and the Irish characters' economic constraints, including Benny's long daily bus commute. Eve's loyalty to Benny is highlighted as the emotional core of the friendship theme. The episode ends with both hosts agreeing the film holds up as a portrait of female friendship, body image, and the pressures of religion and family expectation, even if some of its romantic resolutions feel too tidy.

As heard by us

A warm, sharp rewatch of Circle of Friends that finds money, reputation, and family pressure inside the romance.

Stuff Mom Never Told You treats Circle of Friends as a rewatch with a feminist pulse, moving through the film's tangled loyalties rather than sanding them down into nostalgia.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

For when you want a story about class pressure, family pressure, and very serious jokes in the cottage.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Stuff Mom Never Told You