Julia Fox is everywhere. She may be ‘running on fumes,’ but she doesn’t want to sacrifice a single moment.

AUSTIN, Texas — Just as Charli XCX sang in her Grammy-nominated song “360,” Julia Fox is everywhere — including the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival.

“I've been running on fumes for like three years, 1,000%. That comes with having a small child and not wanting to sacrifice,” she told Yahoo Entertainment backstage at the premiere of her latest film, Idiotka. “I don't want to look at my child and be resentful or something. So if that means I just have to work harder, then that's what I'm gonna have to do.”

“I just take him everywhere with me. We'll see how he feels about it in a couple years,” she added. Her son, who is 4, wasn’t present for the interview — but he was on her mind as she promoted her new family-centric movie.

Since Uncut Gems launched her to stardom in 2019, she’s appeared in several movies, TV shows and music videos. Beyond her onscreen credits, Fox has become part of the cultural zeitgeist by embracing high fashion and radical honesty.

Idiotka, which premiered March 12 at SXSW, blends together much of what she’s best known for. The film follows a scrappy fashion designer named Margarita (Anna Baryshnikov), who lives with her family in a Russian immigrant community in L.A. as she competes in a reality competition show.

Fox plays one of the show’s judges. She said it was fun to see how “art imitates life.” She hosted her own reality competition show, OMG Fashun, in 2024.

“I thought it would be so fun to be able to revisit it through a different lens,” she said.

Fox’s persona is a perfect match for the film, which is all about what female artists have to do to prove themselves to the world. She and Baryshnikov are two of the movie’s executive producers.

“Just being a New York girly, you're naturally a producer. You just make shit happen,” Fox said. “You know how to get from point A to point B, you know who to call. I’ve got a person for everything. … it felt like I’ve been producing my whole life.”

Nastasya Popov, who wrote and directed Idiotka, impressed Fox with her persistence. Popov showed up to a book signing for Fox’s memoir, Down the Drain, in 2023, and explained that she had written the part with the star in mind. Fox said yes before she even read the script.

“[In the movie I say] a lot of the same stuff I would say on my show, which I thought was funny,” she said. “But it's just what came naturally from having watched so many of these types of shows like Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, [and] RuPaul's Drag Race … so I just put that hat on and ran with it.”

Popov told Yahoo Entertainment that making the reality show a core part of the script was a late addition. She initially set out to write something about the paradox of being an artist and the child of immigrants, inspired by a period during which she moved back home with her family.

As the daughter of Russian Jewish political exiles, she grew up being encouraged to “suffer in silence” and “grin and bear it through oppression.” Her experience as an American artist contrasted that teaching, though — she was encouraged to overshare and “regurgitate my trauma for anyone who’d listen.”

In Idiotka, Margarita faces that same challenge: Does she remain true to herself and her upbringing by embracing stoicism, or showcase her family’s struggles, knowing it's part of who she has become?

Baryshnikov’s father, the legendary ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, was born in Latvia to a Russian family before he defected to Canada to pursue dance. Anna told Yahoo Entertainment that she is much more of an emotionally open book than her character. She’s no stranger to Hollywood, having appeared in Manchester by the Sea and Love Lies Bleeding, but she was eager to take the reins as a lead actor for the first time.

“It's always an interesting balance when you know you're playing the cipher for the director themselves,” Baryshnikov said. She watched Popov’s family carefully to develop the character, drawing inspiration from “a balance of sheer, unbridled passion and stoicism and anxiety.”

Baryshnikov cherished the days on set when the cast that played Margarita’s family got together — particularly Galina Jovovich, who was based on Popov’s grandmother.

“I didn’t know my paternal grandmother, but she was a huge champion of the arts and she’s who got my dad to start dancing,” Baryshnikov said. “I’ve always had this idealized version of who that grandmother might have been in my life, and meeting Galina and having her be the most fabulous, sassy incredible actress — I got to live out what the relationship would have been like, so the scenes with her were really special.”

Jovovich had a few scene-stealing moments, for which the whole cast would huddle around the monitor and cheer her on.

Rounding out the cast of the fictional reality show within the movie is a slew of internet darlings — rapper Saweetie and comedian Benito Skinner play the other two judges in addition to Fox, and actor/podcaster Owen Thiele plays the show’s host.

Popov was a fan of all three of them and delivered scripts to them through friends and friends of friends. She might have been as scrappy as her main character when it came to bringing the film together, but Baryshnikov said Popov’s refusal to approach the film from a “scarcity mindset” while still keeping things collaborative and letting “the best idea win” gave her faith that the project would become something amazing.

“She wasn’t going to let her creative ideas get run over just so she could get her film made,” Baryshnikov said. “She was going to make the film she wanted.”