Charli xcx plays herself in "The Moment," a meta mockumentary about the end of Brat summer and grappling with otherworldly success.

"I was just really interested in telling this story about expectation," Charli xcx told The Associated Press the day after "The Moment" debuted at the Sundance Film Festival.

The 33-year-old pop star from Essex has been in the music industry since she was 16, with a career trajectory that she described as anything but straight forward. Then, in 2024, it hit a crescendo with her sixth studio album, "Brat," which became a pop culture phenomenon. Finally, she said, she felt understood for a moment. And then, just as quickly, it changed.

"There was this sort of, kind of, you know, persona that people really associated me with and then there were a lot of expectations put on me as a person, as an artist, of who I was then supposed to be. And I didn't fit into that sort of narrative," she said. "I had got to this place where I was finally feeling so understood. Then I was like not understood again."

Making something immensely popular and resonant can be a double-edged sword for an artist working in a business that would sometimes rather milk the "sure thing" forever than let someone evolve and move on. She found herself wanting to grapple with that tension, that existential conundrum that she'd experienced.

Charli xcx likes a "meta moment"

A straightforward documentary didn't seem like right approach, so she and Aidan Zamiri, the 30-year-old Scottish photographer and music video director, got to work on something else, something that felt truer to them. "The Moment" is a little "This is Spinal Tap," a little "Black Swan," a little meta, with the likes of Kylie Jenner and Rachel Sennott playing... Read More