Today, Jason Bateman is praised for his directorial skills, especially after his Netflix masterpiece, Ozark. However, his first experience as a professional director came with a 1989 episode of The Hogan Family, when he was just 20 years old. But the real challenge was yet to come. That was when he directed the 2013 black comedy, Bad Words, which might have had a network television censor reaching for smelling salts.

In a later interview, Jason Bateman admitted it was his daughters who ultimately led him to tone down his use of profanity.

Jason Bateman made his feature directorial debut with Bad Words with a 10-year-old, and with lines that left everyone shocked. Drawing from his own experiences as a child actor, Bateman helped his young co-star navigate the film’s risqué material. During a 2014 GQ interview about the movie, when asked how to best insult a kid, Bateman paused and said, “I don’t know if I could ever insult a kid anymore.”

Bateman added, “I’ve turned into such a softy.” This shift from harsh language and profanity in movies- even though he is leaning toward darker roles now- was likely influenced by his daughters, as he soon promised never to make them watch the 2013 movie. Not just that, as a parent himself, Bateman understood the concerns of his co-star Rohan Chand’s parents, especially considering the film’s R-rated nature.

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Jason Bateman explained in another interview how he tried to make Chand’s parents comfortable throughout the process.

Before casting Rohan Chand for Bad Words, Jason Bateman made sure his parents were comfortable with the material he would be presenting, as he shared with Buzzfeed in 2014. Bateman was confident that Chand’s parents had no objections to the script as they had read it before allowing their child to audition. Even so, Bateman offered as much reassurance as they needed.

As Bateman explained, he checked in with them regularly—whether daily or hourly—about the context of each difficult scene and how it would be delivered to the audience through editing and music. “I tried to assure them that it wasn’t gratuitous or arbitrary,” said Bateman. Now that his daughters are quite grown up, it is uncertain if Bateman would delve into the same level of profanity as Bad Words again.

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