What was the challenge in gauging the emotional tone of the film’s final moments, which sidestep the tendency of filmmakers who—when helming a personal project—attempt to give themselves the catharsis they couldn’t receive in their own lives?
Well, first of all, it’s true that it was out of my life. My mother said those words to me more than a few times throughout the years, including right before she passed. There’s definitely a draft of this script where Ellis and Inez did make up, but after I had that conversation with my mother, I realized that’s not what I needed from this movie. In terms of gauging the tone, I think a big tool that I like to use as a filmmaker is misdirection. In this film, we are gearing up for the moment when Ellis’ mother finally accepts him.
And we’ve seen that in so many movies, where the mother arrives at her child’s graduation for the sentimental finale.
Yes! [laughs] When it comes down to it, though, people are a lot less predictable and a lot messier than they are in movies. The misdirect here is that it was never about his mother. That’s the thing I learned. If there’s anything that I want people who have been through domestic violence and parental abuse and things like that to understand is that it’s not you, it’s them. You’re fine, you can love yourself. Just because someone did something bad to you doesn’t mean that you deserved it, and I’m still processing that. I’m definitely much better than I was with it, but I have to remind myself every day that it wasn’t my fault. Another message of this film is you can’t do for others what you haven’t been taught and what hasn’t been done for you. No one ever gave Inez the unconditional love that Ellis is looking for, so when she says, “I can’t love you,” in my mind, the subtext is, “I don’t know how.” Once that Marine comes up to Ellis and says, “Thank you for your service,” he has learned how to love himself even though she didn’t know how to act on that love that she had. He learned how by enduring this process and never giving in to the pressure to hide himself.
What quality did Jeremy Pope have that made you realize he was the right actor for this role?
Oh my god, I love this man. Every day with Jeremy is a surprise became he is an agile talent, so working with him was an embarrassment of riches. We shot the film in the summer in Mississippi, and though we were promised 23 days, we ended up shooting it in 19 because we lost four days due to Covid. So Jeremy was on his toes because he had to be, and he kept coming up with something every time. Beyond that, it was always his part. When I wrote the first draft of this in 2017, I put together my little wish list of all the actors I would cast in each role, and Jeremy, Gabrielle and Raúl were all at the top of that list. One part of why I wanted to cast Jeremy is his resume. For such a young, relatively new actor, his accomplishments are quite formidable. Secondly, it was about authentic representation.
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