Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat on playing best-friend stoners, getting high on set on purpose and by accident, and the movie Dylan Meyer spent a decade pushing up the hill.

The Wrong Girls, from writer and director Dylan Meyer, is a wholesome stoner comedy. The movie features an experimental drug, conspiracies, mad scientists, and, without spoiling anything, octopuses. At the end of the day, though, the delightful jam-packed LA story is about two best friends, Frankie (Kristen Stewart) and Molly (Alia Shawkat), and their feel-good commitment to one another.

For over a decade, Meyer pushed The Wrong Girls up the hill. She never gave up on Frankie and Molly, based on her friendship with producer Maggie McLean. Stewart, who married Meyer in 2025 and produced the film, and Shawkat do the filmmakers proud, playing endearing stoners on the run from shadowy operatives after a case of mistaken identity

Think The Parallax View meets Cheech & Chong. A part of the charm of the movie is that Meyer crafts it like a good high: giggly, random, and willing to go anywhere for the sake of a good time, all while somehow maintaining focus.

Shawkat and Stewart don’t ever let the high dip, either. Considering the actors have known each other since making the 2010 film, The Runaways, their long history adds to the film’s kind-hearted intimacy. That affection comes through even over a Zoom call, too. Everyone would be fortunate to have a friend who looks at you the way Stewart does Shawkat and vice versa.

Recently, the two stars of The Wrong Girls spoke with High Times about the loving friendship in the film, their own history with cannabis, and, according to Stewart, why everyone should experience Mannequin Pussy in concert.

Thank you for speaking with High Times.

Stewart: We’re fucking thrilled.

[Laughs] The Wrong Girls is a stoner buddy comedy, a food lover film, a conspiracy thriller, and a superhero/witch story. There’s even more to it than that, but on the page, could you both just see a lot of room to play as Frankie and Molly?

Stewart: Yes. There’s such a sweetness and such a sort of welcome, familiar space, that for someone who’s not hella used to doing comedy, I was like, “No, I can do this. I could do backflips in my sleep on this movie.” It has such a fucking ingratiating tone. It’s a lovely little room to be in.

It was funny before we touched it. Alia is kind of a genius. I just was like, “Just learn your lines, and you’ll be fine because Dylan’s really fucking funny.” And then when we got there, it did just become its own alive little fucking being between the two of us. That’s all you can hope for.

Alia, what did you immediately appreciate about The Wrong Girls?

Shawkat: It’s such a fun story. It doesn’t take itself too seriously. And yet, like Kristen was saying, in the moment, we kind of had to take it seriously to make it fly. And then it was so funny for that reason.

It’s my favorite kind of movie to make. We got to be dumb and imagine the silliest things, like, “Okay. So, now there’s a squid, and it’s attacking somebody.” I mean, it was the best job ever, for sure.

You’ve said it’s the best set you’ve experienced. For both of you, what makes for a great set?

Shawkat: Good weather [Laughs].

[Laughs] That matters to some actors.

Stewart: It’s funny because it’s really important. There was a night that was so cold, we couldn’t even blink. I couldn’t even see her; my tears were freezing on my face. We were wearing trash bags for dresses, which are super fucking high fashion, just so you know. I couldn’t move my face or remember anything I was supposed to do or say.

Shawkat: They were putting jackets around us.

Stewart: It’s really infantilizing [Laughs].

Shawkat: Good people. Obviously, you want your leader, which is usually the director, to have a good vibe and set the tone. Dylan really did that. She kept such a level head and positive attitude, but also cared. Everyone was so down to make this weird story come to life.

Stewart: You want to work with your friends because it’s kind of rare to be able to cultivate that shit. Because we’re old, we’re doing it, and it’s tight. Level down from being as lucky as we are to be able to really choose who we work with, which is such a huge privilege. You hope you make friends on the set that you’re on and that they become constants, even if you don’t see each other constantly. There’s a little, I don’t know, microcosm of a forever memory that keeps you tied where you’re like, “I could see you in 10 years and be like, ‘Dude.’”

And you got to have this experience in Los Angeles, which is notoriously difficult for film productions. Kristen, as a producer, how is trying to make an LA movie?

Stewart: This movie has been the little engine that could for years. It’s come together and fallen apart so many times. It has had many iterations. Me and Alia, I think, are the coolest ones [Laughs]. But we just, by the skin of our teeth, made this fucking movie, applied for the tax credit so many times, and then lost money, got it back. Alia had a baby. We were going to make the movie before she did that, and then we were like, “Oh, can’t do it.”

To answer your question kind of specifically, yeah, it’s a total bitch to work in LA. But it’s what the dream is, and it’s what we all hope and wish for and fight for. I wish it was easier. But we made it through.

Imagine if I was the one calling and trying to get permits and shit [Laughs].

Shawkat: “Give it to us!”

[Laughs] Your name could help, right?

Stewart: It depends. Sometimes it’s like you either get out of the car, or you don’t. Do you know what I mean? As in you’re like, “Fuck, should I go in there?” And people are like, “No.” Or it’s like, “Dude, maybe you should come in and see if we can kind of grease that shit.” You have to temperature check that shit [Laughs].

It’s such an LA movie. Frankie and Molly are familiar characters. Kristen, growing up in the valley, did you know a lot of characters like this?

Stewart: I am a character like this [Laughs].

[Laughs] I didn’t want to presume.

Stewart: But, yeah, absolutely. These are not made-up people. There’s a source, and it is 818 or 310 or 323 [Laughs]. I mean, it’s not like cute stoner best friend girls who lack ambition in a really kind of positive and compassionate, beautiful, fucking chill anti-capitalist way; it exists everywhere. But I do think a lot of them, it is kind of a Cali-centric thing. The Wild West out here; we went all the way to the edge so we could smoke weed.

[Laughs] Alia, what about yourself? As a very accomplished actor and artist, you’ve said you enjoyed playing someone dumb.

Stewart: Alia is not dumb.

Shawkat: Did I say dumb? I guess I did.

You did, although Molly’s bong-a-tron is genius.

Shawkat: It’s like I love how dumb the ideas are in some way. My highest form of compliment is to give when I look at something and go, “That is so stupid.” [Laughs] I think that’s the most genius. To make something stupid and funny is a lot harder than you think. It was playing someone, I think, who is light of worry, just like, “It’s all going to work out, no matter what,” was really fun to play. Just a lighter head.

Stewart: It’s really nice, dude, because that feeling, it rubs off on you. I play someone who’s a little bit ahead of herself and more neurotic. I’ve said this before, but I’ll fucking say it again because it’s kind of just a great way of putting, Molly and Alia is like a walking hug. She’s the opposite of a rain cloud, just a sunny ass sky. So fucking cute.

Shawkat: Really fun to be that, that energy all the time, because I’m not that all the time, so… [Laughs]

Stewart: She’s a bitch [Laughs].

Shawkat: [Laughs] A really staunch Republican and in a bad mood most of the time.

[Laughs] That’d be quite a twist in pop culture. Did you find Molly’s creative process, how creative she gets with food and paraphernalia, relatable to your own artistic process?

Shawkat: Obviously, all of us are in our characters a bit. But also growing up in California and being a stoner, not as much practicing these days, but growing up as a stoner, I think there’s a practicality of being like, “We have to figure out how to fix this problem, but it’s also fun.” That was always the goal, I think. It’s just being like, “Well, how do we do this, but also make it chill? We have to make it chill.” It is just a priority, and I think I relate to that.

Their problem-solving is so sweet and innocent. Even when people are actually after them, they’re still more bummed that they got in a fight with their best friend than the fact that people are chasing them with guns. She’s like, “I shouldn’t have said that to her…” A part of that I relate to because at the end of the day, that is kind of your world.

For both of you, what just read as really authentic about the friendship between Frankie and Molly?

Stewart: I feel like they don’t share a voice, but they share a language. I mean, that’s kind of a feat to accomplish in something that has the tone that this movie has, because I think that the characters are hyper-developed. The script has shifted over the years, but it really lives in the now. It kind of acknowledges things that, like she was saying, “light of worry.” It’s really hard to not worry about shit right now.

It also feels like the movie doesn’t not acknowledge that, even though it doesn’t talk about it. You know what I mean? It’s not a didactic experience. But I do think the characters kind of rep not just a good time, but a good time for all, which is kind of a political statement, even though it’s silly.

The characters were kind of also based on Dylan herself and Maggie, our producer, and her best friend. And then a little combination of us bringing ourselves to it, because we can’t do anything but that. Your instincts have to be your own.

And so, it was this merging of this fucking sick friend group. It’s like Dylan and her best friend and me and Alia, who have known each other for a fucking long time, and in another world, we’re fucking best friends. We just work a lot and don’t see each other enough.

I think with the two-hander, it’s essential that even though we’re always right next to each other in a two-shot, and that we kind of go together, that it doesn’t feel contrived and it doesn’t feel overthought. It either fucking works, or it doesn’t. We were really lucky to feel like we had two feet in a potato sack. It’s because we know each other and we have similar fucking sensibilities.

“I feel like they don’t share a voice, but they share a language.”

Kristen Stewart

When it comes to playing high characters, were there any do’s and don’ts for you both? It’s easy to think of good or bad stoner characters.

Shawkat: I hadn’t smoked in a little while because I had a kid. And so, part of my homework was like, “I’ve got to get stoned alone again.” I love weed so much, and it’s a very good drug for me, if you want to call it a drug. But what I realized is, like anything, in performance, when you play drunk or high, it’s never to really play it. I was like, “No, it’s just me. If anything, it’s just me holding back, not being so reactive to everything.” Everything’s just a little like, “Hmm, what?” It’s just a second later.

Just don’t push it. Don’t try to be like, ‘[Keith Richards-esque voice] I’m stonnnned.’ Not that that was ever my instinct, but I had thought about it a lot. When I was doing it, I was like, “I know how to do it.” Like, “Whatever. Shut the fuck up.”

Stewart: I was kind of high for a lot of this. Every once in a while, Dylan would be like, “Stoney baloney?” Also, I was playing a really weird kind of neurotic person. So, when my character’s stoned, she’s even more the opposite of what Alia just said, which is like, “Huh, what?” I’m really reactive, “What? What?” Yeah, paranoid.

Did you two look at any classic buddy or stoner movies for inspiration?

Stewart: It was after we did The Wrong Girls, but I recently, for the very fucking first time, watched The Blues Brothers. I was noticing just the way that it’s shot and how practical it is. First of all, that movie is just ballistic, but it’s the way the two of them are always sharing space. I was like, “Okay.” That’s foundational. A lot of Beavis and Butt-Head. Also, Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, always together, but separate as one. I love a fucking well-played two-shot. It’s so satisfying and fun to watch.

Shawkat: I watched a lot of stoner comedies leading up to it just as a fan. It’s such a fun genre, and there’s not so many of them. Smiley Face I really loved. It was great homework to be like, “Oh, let’s watch this kind of genre,” and now, honored to add something to the shelf.

Kristen, like you said, cannabis played a role in this performance. How do you find cannabis helpful, whether relaxing or inspiring, while on a film set?

Stewart: I should smoke less weed, but it’s a huge relief because I’m just fucking very ahead of myself sometimes. It gives me the ability to indulge my imagination without spinning, and it makes my tummy feel good.

It’s funny because it’s an internal experience, and it makes it harder to communicate, but that’s okay. Do you know what I mean? Because you should be with people who have fucking patience for you. You can’t smoke weed on every set, and I definitely don’t. The worst is when you’re high around the wrong fuckers. It’s like hell.

I had nothing to do with the actual development of this. This was so completely Dylan’s beast. I just got there, smoked a little weed, and hung out with Alia. And so, it was an obvious opportunity to do what you’re normally not supposed to do, which is fun.

Does it take away any anxiety or pressure on a film set?

Stewart: No way. It’s the opposite. I’m like, “Uh.”

Shawkat: I got high making this movie by accident.

How did that happen?

Shawkat: Two times the weed had a little bit of THC and just enough to be like, “What’s going on?” As someone who hadn’t been smoking so much weed at the time, I was a lot more sensitive to it. I was like, “Yeah, we’re in a stoner movie. I am playing stoned, but at the same time, I have all these choices I wanted to make.” [Laughs] I was like, “Oh, no.”

But honestly, it was for the best. In both situations it was perfect. I just looked at Kristen, and I was like, “Did you feel…?” And she’s like, “Yeah, just go with it. You’re fine.” You’re right. If anything, yeah, it always just reminds me not to overthink stuff so much. It’s okay. It’s all going to be fine, and it was. Both those scenes actually ended up being some of the best.

Obviously, you prepare a lot. You have choices you want to make, but how much is the work defined by what’s just really happening on the day and what you’re reacting to?

Shawkat: If you’re lucky, you do that every day. I mean, it depends on the job. If you’re doing an accent and a dance routine, obviously, you have to be like, “Remember what you did.” But this is so much more about being present and us being silly and something that actually makes us laugh in the moment when we’re exhausted, and then capturing that, which we did. It was making up stupid little songs or just the rhythm of us hanging out, capturing it, capturing that real friendship. It was being like, “Watch these girls fuck around,” but we always knew our lines.

Stewart: It would be a total bummer to feel, yeah, that your choices were hinges or something. It’s nice to feel you can do no wrong because you’re coming at it so purely. I’m so fucking hard on myself, I’ll be like, “Oh, I don’t know if this is fucking funny.” And it’s like, “Who cares? Dude, that’s not what we’re doing.”

Speaking of dance routines, imagine if we planned ours. It was the worst end-of-movie dance of all time [Laughs] It was just like, “What? Did you guys even fucking think about this?” We’re like, “No.”

Shawkat: [Laughs] No. I think we were five minutes before.

Dylan made a playlist for The Wrong Girls, right?

Stewart: Dylan made a really lit playlist.

Shawkat: We listened to that a lot.

Who was on it?

Shawkat: Mannequin Pussy. Mannequin Pussy is in the movie, and that’s a band that we really identify with and are super inspired by. We’re huge fucking fans of them.

I’m seeing them in two weeks. Never seen them before.

Stewart: Oh, cool. As someone who kind of found them and then went through their library backwards, they fucking rock. She’s sexy scary, scary sexy. She’s a fucking strong-ass lady. She’s so good live, it’ll fucking knock your tits off your face.

The Wrong Girls opens in theaters August 14th.

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It’s difficult to admit this—especially to the readers of High Times—but for most of my life, I flat-out hated the hippies. That’s curious, considering I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and, for a quarter of a century, have lived just three blocks from Golden Gate Park—ground zero for the very counterculture I went out of my way to avoid.

But my aversion to dancing bears and patchouli oil didn’t come out of nowhere. It was forged last century in a scene I can only imagine has played out in households across America over the past sixty years—when one member of the family starts wearing tie-dye, smoking weed, dropping acid, and then takes off to follow the Grateful Dead.

My Hippie Brother

As a teenager in the 1980s, I remember how painfully embarrassed I felt by my brother, who wore Birkenstocks and wooden beads, and looked like a mashup of Charles Manson, Jesus Christ, and a street poet carrying a tambourine. He danced around our high school with abandon, sharing messages of peace and love with everyone he met. I was mortified. But my brother was just being himself.

At the time, I was too young to grasp what I was witnessing. All that I could see was that my brother worshipped a band named after dead people—who seemingly all used drugs—and had images of skeletons wearing top hats plastered everywhere. None of it seemed the least bit fun or whimsical then. In fact, it scared the living daylights out of me.

That fear became real when my brother disappeared one day and couldn’t be found. Eventually, word arrived that he’d overdosed at a Dead show after ingesting an entire sheet of LSD, resulting in a full-blown medical emergency and a stint in rehab—which created a staggering amount of chaos in an already fractured family.

With all eyes on my brother, everyone forgot about parenting me. It went unnoticed that I was dyslexic and failing all of my classes, or that I, too, had been using drugs but simply hadn’t been caught. At just sixteen years old, I dropped out of high school and beauty college—both at the same time—and none of it was pretty.

Then, as often happens to people who live in a black and white world without a touch of grey, I buttoned up, flung myself in the opposite direction, and never looked back. After enrolling in community college at seventeen, I figured out some learning hacks, earned a master’s degree, and accomplished things I didn’t know were possible, which made me feel responsible.

But somewhere along the way, I let judgment take the wheel and distanced myself from anything counterculture. Burning Man, psychedelics, or even a whiff of kombucha was a hard pass for me, and I doubled down on my boycott of the Grateful Dead. It felt like self-protection rather than what it really was: a hardened heart. 2009 was the last time I’d seen or spoken to my brother.

How I Changed My Mind

Eventually, all of that unprocessed trauma caught up with me; it always does. For twenty years, I did all the “right things,” dragging myself to doctors’ appointments and therapy sessions all over town, spending incalculable amounts of time and money in the process. None of it moved the needle.

Having exhausted all available options and ready to give up, I reluctantly agreed to try therapist-assisted psychedelic therapy—a process where a trained facilitator administers psychedelics and guides patients to release deep-rooted trauma. Because these treatments are still largely illegal, I wasn’t a good sport about it at first and backed out several times before my first session. But much to my astonishment, it worked, and each session unlocked something new.

It wasn’t inexpensive, but I learned the hard way that chipping away at those layers cannot be done alone and requires a professional who can help navigate the process. I would never recommend this work without a qualified facilitator.

Eventually, I became curious to try psychedelics out in the wild. My friend Lisa came over with a boombox and a bag of mushrooms, and we walked to Golden Gate Park. I quickly realized I didn’t like it, as the medicine had become too sacred for casual use.

Then, as a group of people passed by, a humbling truth finally landed: I’d become the person I’d once criticized—fuzzy vest and all—doing psychedelics in the park. I snapped a photo so I couldn’t unsee the cold, hard truth: I owed my brother an apology.

I reached out shortly thereafter, sharing my journey and apologizing for being such a profound asshole. He received it with immense grace, and we began repairing our relationship one text at a time. Then, something truly unbelievable happened.

Facing the Music

The universe has a way of rewarding a humble heart with a bit of magic. I’d just taped a quote to my computer monitor that I’d heard for the first time in a meeting moments before. It arrived with a sense of urgency that compelled me to write it down: “The fortune is in the follow-up.”

Staring at the directive, I immediately thought of a business advisor I hadn’t spoken to in a while and picked up the phone. He mentioned he’d just been given an extra ticket to an upcoming benefit concert at the Oakland Zoo for a charter school he supports, and he invited me along.

The performer? Bobby Weir and the Wolf Brothers.

I had only recognized the name as being connected to the Grateful Dead, but I didn’t fully grasp the profound significance of what I was about to encounter—even as I drove from San Francisco to Oakland, crossed the bridge, and rode a gondola to the top of the zoo, a place I’d visited often as a kid.

Once there, I spotted my advisor among the small group of guests, and we discreetly stepped outside to smoke a joint before finding our seats. It was only then that I was struck by the irony that I wouldn’t be leaving this earth without seeing a Dead show after all.

As the performance got underway, I finally understood exactly who I was looking at, despite having never laid eyes on him before. Standing just ten feet away from me, in all of his glory, was a man who had started an actual revolution—right down the street from where I live—whose influence extended far beyond music. He was also the same person that I’d unfairly held responsible for the pain in my family I’d experienced growing up.

While I may have refused to hear his message before, I had somehow found myself face-to-face with Bobby Weir in a moment of reckoning. As he stared directly into my eyes with a haunting, soulful intensity, it became clear to me that I was meant to hear his message now—so I listened.

It was a formal, seated event, but after a few songs, I got up and danced anyway. I danced for my brother. I danced for the good fortune that I had ended up in that room. I danced because the things that had felt stuck inside me wanted to move. I danced with abandon.

Bobby sang the Bob Dylan cover “When I Paint My Masterpiece” right to my face. I’d never heard it before, but it struck a chord, and the lyrics mirrored the places I’d been—and what I’m quietly building. I decided to make it my song and use the title’s words as my new mantra.

I took very few photos that evening, remaining fully present as I opened my heart as wide as possible and took everything in. Then, with tears in my eyes, I chose to close a very difficult chapter of my life once and for all, silently apologizing to the beautiful spirit that had been serenading me, until I felt something inside me shift.

Arriving Full Circle

Following the incredible evening, I went online to learn more about Bobby Weir and was surprised to find out that like me, he had undiagnosed dyslexia and had dropped out of school. I’ve since done a deep dive on all things Bobby Weir & The Grateful Dead, but on that occasion,  as I made my way to his personal website, I discovered that tickets for Dead & Company’s sold-out residency at The Sphere had just been released for its opening weekend—which also happened to be my birthday. 

Knowing that a private concert with a few dozen people was hardly the same as attending a true “show,” and without any hesitation, dropped a small fortune for two VIP tickets and a suite at the Venetian and invited my boyfriend to join me. It was, hands down, the best concert I’d ever seen.

The same magic happened when Dead & Company played their final three shows in Golden Gate Park in August 2025. When I noticed that tickets had become available for the sold-out performances, I bought super VIP “Golden Road” passes for the first and last shows. I invited my brother to join me, but he told me his concert-going days were already behind him. With my fella out of town, I walked the last few blocks of my long spiritual crossing alone, and made up for lost time.

But the most important full-circle moment took place in Oregon, after I boarded a plane to visit my brother and his family for the first time in fifteen years. We stayed up until the wee hours sharing stories of our parents—who had both since passed away—and compared notes about our childhood. It was a revelation for him to learn how much I had struggled growing up, and his sadness for my younger self felt like a final layer of ice melting away.

In a special moment I’ll never forget, he gave me an olive green medicine pouch that had been a sacred part of his own healing journey. He wanted me to have it for mine. As we bonded over the music that I had now come to also love, we watched videos of old concerts while he told me what it was really like to leave home and follow the Dead. I looked at the gentle, kind person I’d distanced myself from for decades—and realized with a shock of joy that we had actually become a lot alike.

The Final Revolution

When the sad news broke that Bobby Weir had passed away, I felt a quiet, profound sense of awe—not just for the music I came to love, but for the miracle of giving me my brother back.

In the days that followed, I watched two outstanding documentaries—The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir and the six-part Long Strange Trip—to catch up on everything I’d missed, and finally understood the full message of the Grateful Dead. It turns out that I was wrong about the hippies.

Bobby Weir presented a masterclass in life and demonstrated for everyone—especially those of us who see the world differently—how to create a blueprint that hadn’t existed before but will echo for generations.

“The fortune is in the follow-up” wasn’t a business quote or a concert ticket after all. It was the immense value of making things right. I saw the masterpiece he created by staying true to himself—even when the world wasn’t wired for him. I chose to follow his lead—and now I’m part of the song.

All images courtesy of LL St. John.

This article is from an external, unpaid contributor. It does not represent High Times’ reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.

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