Toni Collette's "I Am Your Mother" Hereditary Monologue

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Hereditary.

About

Toni Collette's "I Am Your Mother" Hereditary Monologue refers to a dramatic speech given by actress Toni Collette as Annie in the 2018 A24 horror film Hereditary. The angry monologue has been widely parodied on social media, both as a copypasta and in recreations in which people perform the monologue in humorous videos.

Origin

In the 2018 Ari Aster horror film Hereditary, Toni Collette's character Annie gets angry at her son Peter at the dinner table, causing her to stand up and berate him (shown below).

DON'T you swear at me, you little shit! Don't you EVER raise your voice at me! I am your mother! You understand? All I do is worry and slave and defend you, and all I get back is that fucking face on your face! So full of disdain and resentment and always so annoyed! Well, now your sister is dead! And I know you miss her and I know it was an accident and I know you're in pain and I wish could take that away for you. I WISH I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but your sister is dead! She's gone forever! And what a waste… if it could've maybe brought us together, or something, if you could've just said "I'm sorry" or faced up to what happened, maybe then we could do something with this, but you can't take responsibility for anything! So, now I can't accept. And I can't forgive. Because… because NOBODY admits anything they've done!

The text first appeared on Reddit's /r/copypasta^[1] on September 10th, 2018, where it was posted by Redditor filmfan44444.

Spread

Memes surrounding the monologue began growing prominent in early 2020. For example, on March 1st, 2020, Twitter user @praisejeebus^[2] posted a mashup between the monologue and Say So by Doja Cat. The post has been deleted, but that day, TikToker NVRO posted a dance to the mashup, gaining over 22,000 likes in three years (shown below, top). On March 25th, Twitter user @austinsharris^[3] posted a parody of Gal Gadot's "Imagine" Video by featuring several friends reading portions of the monologue. The video went viral, gaining over 21,000 retweets, 81,000 likes and 1.6 million views in three years (shown below, bottom).

I was so inspired by those celebrities singing “Imagine” that I asked some friends to come together to perform Toni Collette’s “I am your mother” monologue from Hereditary pic.twitter.com/BrR5ejSBV4

— Austin S. Harris (@austinsharris) March 25, 2020

Over the following years, several recreations of the monologue done in different, more soothing tones compared to the original grew popular on social media. On November 1st, 2021, YouTuber ALB in whisperland ASMR posted an ASMR recreation of the monologue, tweaking its content so it would be encouraging rather than insulting. The video gained over 84,000 views in 18 months (shown below, top). On April 17th, 2023, TikToker brunoraponee posted a video in which he recreates the monologue in a "neutral" tone, gaining over 116,000 likes in two weeks (shown below, bottom).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References