Category: The Hollars

Now that Faults is out in select cities and available to stream online either via iTunes or Vimeo, a couple of new interviews have come online. The first comes from Collider where Mary and Riley discuss about wanting to work together, Mary directing in the future and working with John Krasinski in The Hollars:

Did you try to influence your husband, in regard to the character? 

WINSTEAD:  Oh, yeah, definitely. Part of it was that he always knew I was gonna play it, so I was worried that the character would be underwritten and that he wouldn’t really put as much detail into it ‘cause he’d be like, “You’re the actor. You’ll fill in that.” So, I was preemptively like, “Make sure you make this character really interesting.” My character doesn’t come into the script for quite a long time, and the first 30 pages are so strong. I was like, “Please don’t, when you introduce the girl character, make her the least interesting thing in the whole script.” That’s happened to me, a few times, in reading scripts. So, he definitely knew, going into it, that the pressure was on for him to write an interesting female lead. And as it was going, there were a couple of times that I [pointed things out]. The first chunk of the movie, there was a lot of talking about the cult and explaining things and explaining who she is. I was like, “I don’t want that to be all that she does. Let’s make sure that there’s other layers of things going on.” So, he added a couple scenes, early on, that showed a bit more of her strange personality. That was helpful for me, in terms of getting excited about it.

What was it like to be directed by John Krasinski for The Hollars? 

WINSTEAD:  It’s a small part. I was actually shooting The Returned, so I just went and showed up on his set for a couple of days, on a break from [the show]. It was a very small part, but super fun. He’s a sweetheart, and I was really happy just to get to work with him. He was just so full of excitement and passion. He was really lovely, and he wrote a really nice letter to me, asking if I would do it. I had met him before, but only briefly, so I didn’t actually know him. But, I was super happy to be amongst that really great cast. It was a great script on that, so it was fun.

After working with your husband, in that capacity, and then John Krasinski, did it inspire you to also want to direct? 

WINSTEAD:  It did. I think every film I do, I’m paying more and more attention to all of those things, and watching the directors and how they work. It’s making me feel more like I could eventually do it. I do want to direct, eventually. I don’t know if it will be a short film or a music video or a feature, but I know that I want to at least try it and see.

You can also read the full interview Mary and Riley did with Den of Geek discussing how they felt about filming Faults:

The family creative partnership is an interesting one to me. Do you take the work home with you? Do you try and leave it on set?

Stearns: We’re pretty good about not taking it home.

Winstead: I was going to say, when you’re doing this kind of movie you’re just never home.

Stearns:  Her mom came and stayed at our house and watched our dogs, so we didn’t have that to worry about. One thing though is that I was editing at the same time as we were shooting because we were trying to see if we could possibly submit it in time for Sundance, so there was some stress and lack of sleep in that regard. We were staying at a hotel nearby our Long Beach soundstage so that I wasn’t driving far every night. Mary would just stay with me a lot of those nights and I would wake up in the middle of the night sleepwalking basically.

Winstead: Sleep directing. Every night.