00:00I know you mentioned that you said that you weren't sure if you wanted to play Ryle until a conversation with Colleen.
00:06What did she say that convinced you?
00:08Well, early on, when I first read the book, I had an assistant at the time who said, you should play Ryle.
00:14And I think we all have these moments where, you know, you read something or you have a dream about something.
00:20And then that voice inside shows up and it's like, oh, you can never do it or you're not good enough or, you know what, a better actor should play that role.
00:26So I think that deep down, I always wanted to try, but I was afraid and I didn't let myself dream or think that I could do it.
00:34And I would never want to ever harm the movie and harm this book.
00:37And then Colleen sent me an email just before we closed her option agreement.
00:41It was a very short email.
00:42And it said, have you ever thought about acting in the project?
00:45Ryle, perhaps?
00:46I could see it.
00:48And I think that that email and her believing in me gave me permission to believe in myself.
00:54And then, you know, I thought long and hard about it.
00:57I had conversations with my wife.
00:58And two years later in the development process is when I decided, okay, I'm going to do it.
01:04But I wanted it to be truthful.
01:05I wanted it to be honest.
01:06And he's a very complex, dark character that has a lot of pain.
01:10And I just don't know if I was ready to go there at the time.
01:13For sure.
01:13And I know, of course, the movie and the book deals with some pretty heavy topics.
01:17What was the most challenging scene for you to either work through yourself or work through as a director?
01:25I think all of the scenes showcasing gender-based violence, I think that was very hard for me.
01:32I almost had to step out of my body.
01:34There were a lot of times, even thinking about it, it's hard.
01:38There were a lot of times where I would have to go privately into a room and just cry or shake it out and try to get him out of me and that energy out of me because it's too real.
01:51And there are too many people that are the real-life Lily Blooms of the world that have to deal with that every single day.
02:02And I wanted it to be as real as possible, and yet it was very hard to shoot those scenes.
02:11But luckily, the only way it was possible is I had an incredible intimacy coordinator.
02:16I had an incredible stunt coordinator.
02:17Both of them were women.
02:18And then there was Blake, who honestly, between those three women, they really were the ones choreographing and navigating all of those scenes because I needed to play Ryle.
02:27And in those moments, to be perfectly frank, I really wasn't the director.
02:31It was those women that were in charge.
02:33And from the beginning, I wanted all the intimate scenes to be from a female gaze, and I never wanted my bias to potentially interject and go into the film.
02:41So I kind of stepped back and felt all the things and allowed myself to do the work and shook it off as best I could.
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