‘Reminders Of Him’ Director Vanessa Caswill Breaks Down Adaptation

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the entirety of Reminders of Him, now in theaters.

For director Vanessa Caswill (Love At First Sight), one of the final scenes in the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling book was the most important to nail — the reunion of sorts between Maika Monroe‘s Kenna Rowan and her daughter, Diem (Zoe Kosovic).

The latest of Hoover’s best-selling novels to hit the big screen does hinge on this moment because it follows Kenna, fresh out of prison for her involvement in the car crash that killed her former boyfriend and Diem’s father Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow), fighting tooth and nail to get back to her daughter, whom she gave birth to while serving time.

“If we didn’t land that, the film doesn’t work. I think the tricky part of that scene was really knowing that we have a four-year-old child actor who has to hold the moment, and then Maika, obviously, Kenna’s character is having a huge out-of-body, emotional experience, but she has to zip it up,” director Vanessa Caswill told Deadline in an interview about the film. “She has to contain it. What she actually wants to do in that scene, is just grab this child and hold her and cry, but that would be nuts. She can’t do that. That would terrify the child. She’s got to be really restrained with all this emotion coming up.”

It’s Scotty’s best friend Ledger Ward (Tyriq Withers), who provides the biggest obstacle but then aids the most in helping Kenna reconnect with her daughter and with Scotty’s parents.

“Tyriq’s got a huge heart as a person. I think he felt very close to the material, and it was very raw to him. So he was able to carry that sensitivity and keep it very grounded,” Caswills said of the Him star. “That was the thing I wanted to make sure of, is that, because it’s big themes and big things happen, that it didn’t spill into any kind of melodrama, that everybody’s restrained, and they were. That’s where a lot of the emotions of the viewer come out.”

In the below interview, Caswill unpacks another challenging scene to capture that is core to the story, how Monroe, Tyriq withers and Pankow approached their characters and mapping out Laramie, Wyoming, where the film is set, by piecing together parts of Canada.

DEADLINE: What drew you to directing Reminders of Him. Can you talk about your path to getting involved?

CASWILL: I was sent a script. I hadn’t read the book until I read the script, and I just really resonated with the themes in it, but also the tone. I think the tone felt really unique to me, and, in a way, felt quite contemporary, and in another way, sort of reminded me of classic ‘90s movies that I love that are small, human, relational stories, but told in quite an epic way with a cinematic scale, and I felt all of that potential when I read the script.

DEADLINE: Could you describe the tone what tone you wanted to establish? There’s there’s comedy, there’s tragedy, there’s everything in between. But how would you say it in your own words?

CASWILL: I think it’s one of Colleen Hoover’s great skills, that she’s able to write these really flawed, imperfect, deeply lovable characters. There’s something so real and human in that, that I love, and then she takes quite heavy subject matters, and this does have grief in it and pain in it and loss in it, but it’s not a story of that. It’s actually a story that’s quite uplifting and cathartic and very romantic as well. It’s sexy and it’s heartbreaking and it’s funny. Colleen has this way of taking something heavy and then flipping it almost immediately. So, you might find yourself laughing and crying in the same breath. I love that about [how the story] moves in that way.

DEADLINE: How involved were you in casting? What was it like to work with such a stacked team of actors in this film?

CASWILL: Oh, they’re so great. I love them all. It was a beautiful ensemble, and there was a lot of generosity on set. It did feel like a found family when we were making it, super collaborative, creative. I was on board for the casting process from the very beginning. Of course, the main person that we needed to find was our Kenna, and I just feel like Maika Monroe is so perfect for the role. She’s so talented and alive in the moment, and she goes to very vulnerable depths within herself to draw out the stuff that Kenna needs to in certain scenes.

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What I love about her, and what I think is really unique about her and so right for this role, is, she can be cool and aloof. Or, in Kenna’s case, she needs to be hard. She’s just come out of prison, and she’s got all these protective walls up and these masks, because within herself, she’s feeling so unworthy, and she’s got no one to back her, so she’s got to do it herself. But as they start to peel away, as these layers come down, there’s so much vulnerability and warmth in her, and she’s so lovable, and she holds both of those things with equal balance, and so brilliantly. I think that’s very hard to do.

DEADLINE: I wanted to ask about shooting in Calgary, Canada and establishing the key locations from the bookstore-turned bar to the lake and Scotty’s memorial, where the accident happened. How did you go about plotting that map out?

CASWILL: Right from the very beginning, when I read this script, the first line in the script is along lonely road. And I was like, ‘Okay, wow. So we’re meeting this woman, and she’s on a long, lonely road, and that long lonely road has to show us everything that this film is about.’ So when we went to Alberta, because we went to a few different places to find our location, there was something about this vast, really epic landscape, and these mountains that I just felt like, on the one hand, you could feel so isolated and so lonely and lost in them, and on the other like, it’s this quite powerful, mystical land that is bigger than you and holds you, and there’s a benevolence in it.

I loved the opposites of that, and being able to play with that. We obviously had to create a geographical map of our town. And how do we have it that it feels like you can have all these vast shops, you can have these mountains in the background, and have Kenna walking along these prairies to get to work or to get to the town, but you believe that there’s a town there? We thought about that great deal. Our [set] designer ended up creating a map for us, and it all made complete sense, even though it was a fictional town.

DEADLINE: Going off of how you described Maika and her challenges, and how she balances a line, Tyriq has that too with Ledger’s past friendship with Scotty. He might have the biggest challenge, because he has to hate Kenna at first, and then come to love her. How did you work with him to make that believable? Of course, Colleen’s book has the internal monologue that moves the readers along, but viewers might lose that. How did you want to incorporate that aspect?

CASWILL: I love that question. I think that’s really right. That’s one of the things I wanted when I read the book. This is so visceral. It feels so emotional, like I [could] feel the breath in their bodies and the tension that they feel, the sexual tension, and how do we make sure that is translated.

What is so interesting, and you’re right about Ledger, Tyriq’s character. The stakes are really high for him, because he has a lot to lose. Kenna’s got nothing to lose, but I think he feels like he’s Diem’s dad. He’s definitely taking on that role, and he’s so close to [Scotty’s parents,] Grace (Lauren Graham) and Patrick (Bradley Whitford). But what I love about it is that, in the immediacy of their meeting, there is this magnetic attraction between [Ledger and Kenna]. There is this sexual chemistry, but also, I like to believe there is a subconscious, unspoken knowing that they share the same grief.

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It’s deep in their souls, and they can recognize it in each other, so they’re drawn towards each other, and then almost immediately after that, they realize who the other is, and they hate each other, and they’re repelled by each other. The beauty, I think, of the film and the romance in the story is the peeling back of layers. In each scene, there’s a little bit more that is shown or seen, and they’re curious about each other. They’re endlessly curious, even though they want to hate the other, but to the point that they become stripped bare and naked, metaphorically and physically. There’s something very vulnerable about that.

DEADLINE: For Rudy [Pankow], who plays Scotty, he doesn’t have as much screen time, but he really does shine through in those moments as Scotty in memories. Despite limited scenes, how did you work with him to establish the power of this person that did ultimately bring all these people together?

CASWILL: The reality is that Scotty is in every scene. Even if his physical presence isn’t there, he is the essence of every single scene. Every time we are with Diem, we think of Scotty. What was really perfect about Rudy playing Scotty, is that Rudy’s really larger than life. He’s a really big character, very playful. There is this sort of feeling of you can’t ignore his energy. If he’s in the room, it is very noticeable, and Scotty carries that too. There’s something about that that makes me feel like he’s like the sun, and the sun is shining. And when the sun is not there, it is cold and dark and bleak, and that’s the idea around him.

DEADLINE: I have to ask about the car crash scene and how you wanted to approach that as something we don’t fully see until, I think two thirds of the way through the film. Could you talk about that and shooting that scene?

CASWILL: When we shot the actual car crash, we only had one go at doing that. We just had many cameras and crash cameras, and we also had a very short window to do it in, because we had to do it at twilight. Otherwise, if it got too dark, then we wouldn’t be able to see anything through on a road with no natural light. We wanted the shape of the mountains and the trees in the background, so we had a very short window to do this quite tricky stunt shot.

The stunt team were incredible because they were so definite about, ‘This is going to flip exactly how you want it to flip, exactly where you’re going to want it to flip and land in exactly the position you want it to.’ I wanted the headlights, once the car had flipped, to be shooting up the ravine, so that when Kenna walks out, she’s lit and that’s what she’s lit by. And it all just landed perfectly. It was amazing, fantastic.

We were all a bit worried about the stunt guy in the car because it was a big ravine. I don’t know if you can see how big it is in the shot, but it was. He got out, and he was fine. We were all holding our breath on set. All of the shots of Kenna, when she wakes up out of her concussed state and moves around the car, we found this lens that created a ghost filter, so it created multiple images. It felt really good to me, because she’s a little bit high, she’s obviously concussed, she’s very confused. Trying to create a layering effect with that lens, really, for me. [It] made me feel like you’re getting under her skin and experiencing this wreck as she does. We shot the car crash three ways, three times. We shot it on a stage as well. But we had three cars. One car was on a spit, so as they’re rotating in the car, that’s what we did on the stage. And then we had the other car, the one that crashed, and one that had already crashed, that she climbs out of. It was a three-way process.

DEADLINE: When Kenna meets Diem, that was a lot to balance, too, with the Landrys and Ledger there, but really it’s this moment between mother and daughter. It’s in the book, but what did you want to bring out in that scene?

CASWILL: For an actor working with a child actor, they’ve got to be really dexterous and really awake with what the child is bringing in that moment, because they’re not going to do the same thing every time. That’s what was making me feel a little bit of anticipation about it. But [Zoe] was so brilliant. They were both so brilliant. I love the innocence that Diem has in the scene, and all this stuff is going on for Kenna, and they’re both in different places, but also connecting.

DEADLINE: How did you land on the sequence of songs that play when Kenna and Ledger are in the truck and Kenna says all music is sad? Were there different iterations with different songs in the trio that play?

CASWILL: The truth is, we had many iterations of those three songs, and all of them worked, and all of them were funny. Having Justin Bieber felt really contemporary. I just think the combination of those three together created the most humor in the moment, and felt contemporary and effective. So that’s why we landed there. We went through many, many songs together.

DEADLINE: Can you share a couple songs that didn’t make the cut?

CASWILL: One that was quite funny was [Billy Ray Cyrus’] “Achy Breaky Heart.” And there was also the Sinead O’Connor song, “Nothing Compares 2 You.” We just needed songs that were painfully sad.

DEADLINE: Lainey Wilson makes her acting debut in this film. What did you feel like that added to the story? Her music fits in with the film’s soundtrack. What was it like working with her?

CASWILL: It was wonderful. I loved working with her. She’s a huge music star, and then was so humble and grounded and sweet and passionate about playing Amy. I think [she] felt quite a lot of affinity for Amy, because she’s a kind character who will go out of their way to help someone. I think that really resonated for Lainey, for herself, but I just really enjoyed —we did quite a bit of rehearsals on Zoom together, and I really enjoyed working with her, because she was so dedicated to it and so passionate about it, and is just a really lovely person.

DEADLINE: You’ve directed adaptions like Love At First Sight, and then you’ve done the Little Women TV series [starring Maya Hawke, Willa Fitzgerald, Kathryn Newton and Annes Elwy]. It’s often said that the book and the film or the show are two different things, but I’m just looking to get your take on why they’re important and how the process helps both sides?

CASWILL: I feel like, if there is source material, for me, personally, I really want to delve into that source material. And I use for all of those projects you just mentioned, I use the book as, like the Bible, and I feel like it offers me so many clues and extra things that I wouldn’t get if I if I’d just been given the screenplay. So I value the book very much, and I’m obviously really well aware of, certainly in this case, Colleen Hoover has a huge amount of fans, and they love this book and wanting to create something A, that Colleen felt was true to her book, and B, that her fans would feel that way about. The only way to try and do that is to just try and capture the essence of everything that’s in the book as much as possible. And it’s tricky, because anyone who reads a book is going to have a personal interpretation, so you’re never going to win on all levels. I do feel like the essence of that book, and the thing that Colleen was writing about even in the subconscious, is there on the screen.

DEADLINE: Did either of the previous two Colleen Hoover adaptations inform your approach to Reminders of Him, and does it feel right for Reminders of Him to be coming out third in this order? Did you feel momentum from the previous movies?

CASWILL: I was sent the script before the first Colleen Hoover adaptation came out, so I’d already connected to the material, and I already had a sense of what I would want to do with it. So no, I don’t think I was influenced by them at all, really. I hadn’t read the book before I read the script, so it was a very kind of immediate reaction to a script I’d been sent, rather than knowing the book and loving Colleen, and both those things I feel like I do now. At the time, I thought, ‘Oh, I love this material. This is great.’

Reminders of Him is now out in theaters.

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