Car salesman Nate Wilcox (Nate Bargatze) is a prized employee at the Toyota dealership. But all of that changes when his wife, Katie (Mandy Moore), becomes an overnight success for a product she invented. Now, Nate swaps roles with her, becoming a stay-at-home parent … but, he’s bad at it. Very bad. He can’t keep up with anything. He even buys his daughter a horse on a whim. Can he support his wife’s newfound success while keeping his household afloat? Or will it all blow up in his face? Tudum talked with Bargatze, The Breadwinner’s star and co-writer, about the movie. 

The Breadwinner draws inspiration from the comedian’s stand-up sets — like Your Friend, Nate Bargatze; Nate Bargatze: The Greatest Average American; and Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid — in which he jokes about his domestic cluelessness in the face of his wife’s superior competence. But it’s also inspired by the time he spent with his family at the cinema growing up. “When my family would go to the movies together, I always remember leaving happy,” he says. “The whole reason I wanted to make this movie was so families could sit down together, watch, and, hopefully, laugh.”

Alongside Bargatze, the film also features Moore (This Is Us), Colin Jost (Saturday Night Live), Zach Cherry (Severance), Kumail Nanjiani (Only Murders in the Building), Will Forte (Coyote vs. Acme), and Kate Berlant (Maddie’s Secret). “I really couldn’t have asked for a better group of comedians, actors, and friends to do this with,” Bargatze says. “They were all just really fun to be around and everybody on set was excited to have them there as well.”

The film was his feature debut, so he was also the rookie member of the cast. Reflecting on his experience, he says, “I had to figure out where I was supposed to stand and where I was supposed to look, which sounds like it should be pretty simple, but apparently it’s not. The girls who played my daughters [Stella Grace Fitzgerald, Birdie Borria, and Charlotte Ann Tucker] were pros at it, so I learned from them and tried to keep up. Eventually I figured it out.”

From director Eric Appel (Weird: The Al Yankovic Story) and co-writer Dan Lagana (American Vandal), the family-friendly comedy, which premiered in theaters in May 2026, is now streaming on Netflix.