Movies about family can make or break you depending on how the “siblings” work together. Nailing the dynamic of siblings is far from easy. Not every relationship is the same but there are some qualities about those of us with siblings that seem to be universal, like the way we all willingly talk to each other and the way in which we do that. For The Adults, it was more than just the relationship between Eric, Rachel, and Maggie that needed to work.
Eric (Michael Cera) comes back home after a long time to see his sisters Rachel (Hannah Gross) and Maggie (Sophia Lillis). All three of the siblings talk in a very similar way, quick and snarky but it works because it helps us instantly recognize a familiarity between the three of them. I spoke with Gross and Lillis back in June at the Tribeca film festival about their work. When I asked Lillis and Gross about building that bond as sisters, it was easily recognizable in how close they were.
“We got to rely on the script, I think, for creating, for having to establish a dynamic,” Gross said. “It was very, very much within there. And then, what wasn’t explicitly written was still tasks that we had to do, like coming, creating these dances.”
For Lillis, she talked more about the process of it. “It’s kinda like school a little bit. It’s kind of like an afterschool activity,” Lillis said. “Because it was like we had a set thing, but we also had our own activities to work and get back to, almost like a presentation.” Gross cut in to talk about how it helped to bring in the voices they had in the film when they were joking around together. “Yeah like ‘I think we should do this voice, I think this would be kind of fun to do, you know? And it’s true. We really used, Dustin (Guy Defa) became more of a paternal figure than the director.”
Both Lillis and Gross went on to praise Dustin Guy Defa for his skill as a director and how he helped them both bring to life Rachel and Maggie. “It was fun,” Lillis said. “I think that really helped. And I wanted to add something to it and not rely just on the script and everything. But, I think Dustin is a really cool director because I think he works a lot also what I’ve noticed with person to person and stuff like that. He works with a lot of non actors. He still gets a genuine thing out of them. And I think that’s something that I was actually really interested in, in seeing how he would do that. And I think it’s just his personality.”
Gross went on to praise his writing, saying “I think the way he writes is really nice. And I think it’s just the way he is just as a person. He kind of eases into this dynamic really easily and have this dialogue. I probably have had this conversation before and so, it’s always something rooted in it that you can really grab a hold of.”
It’s all in the writing
When I asked Gross specifically about navigating Rachel’s lighter moments with Maggie mixed in with how she feels about Eric coming back into her life and she again praised Dustin Guy Defa’s writing and direction. “Sorry to be redundant, but I think that Dustin’s writing was so relieving because it is there and even though nothing is explicit, it can hinge on almost melodramatic moments in these scenes in which things are explicitly said,” Gross said. “But even then it still feels like tip of the iceberg. The script held everything. There wasn’t this strain of trying to come up with something to be portrayed. It was there and you can rely on everyone within the room to help. That something will be established even if you don’t have to actually be consciously trying to portray it. It will just be there. That just by the nature of us getting together to create these voices, these characters, these songs, that’s establishing a relationship dynamic that points to a whole history of childhood that we don’t actually have to map out and intellectually figure out together. It’s just like something that happened, it naturally happened.”
Lillis joined in to talk about the joy of working all together to try and navigate their dynamics. “I think actually the one reason I think it really works, because I said this earlier, but I was wondering how he does something like that to make things so seem so natural and stuff. And I think it’s because when he writes, and it’s a very rare thing, he doesn’t overshare, he doesn’t over tell a situation. He doesn’t have the person have a very specific reason on why they’re doing what they’re doing. Because a lot of times people don’t really have a reason exactly what they’re doing or don’t know the reason why. And he doesn’t overshare. The reason why I did this is because I was angry and I wanted this, and this is my motive. And it’s like kind of like the actioning type of thing, you know? And there’s none of that because there’s no need. He tells you what you need to know and leaves the rest unsaid because it doesn’t really need to be told.”
Wearing your emotions
For Sophia Lillis, a lot of her work has been characters who are hiding their true feelings behind something. Whether it be behind superpowers in I’m Not Okay With This or the situation that Barbara finds herself in in It, her characters are not as open with their emotions as Maggie is in The Adults. So I asked Lillis about playing a character more like Maggie instead of those who hide how they’re feelings and what it was like tapping into that side of her talent.
“I feel like one thing about Maggie that was fun was that it’s just so different from the characters that I play, which are usually just so angry or angsty or just depressed and they show it, you know?” She said. They’re like ‘I’m angry, I’m really sad. And then with Maggie, I feel like she’s one of the healthiest people I’ve played. She is a lot to go on. She plays a lot around a lot, she doesn’t hide things, she knows sad in her own ways. But she knows how to deal with things. I think she has a good way of doing it. And I think it’s really healthy and it was really fun to play that because it gave me less to really have to deal with something.
She continued to talk about how much she loved playing Maggie. “Can throw that away and just be this character? And that’s what I really liked about her. It was nice doing that because I could wear this emotion on my sleeve and be around and be happy and play around a lot. It gave me more chance to experiment and play.”
To the point that these two really interacted like two people who came to really know and understand each other, Gross responded by talking about how much it made her love Maggie as a character as well. “It’s made me emotional thinking about Maggie,” she said. “Because you do it so well, but also that the way that sweetness is so much more heartbreaking to see on screen. It’s funny because I feel we never really explicitly talked about the fact that our parents had died. It was not part of our shared character development and not something. Which I think that worked somehow. It’s so reflective of how there’s something truthful in that wasn’t part of something that we were always pointing to is this absence. It was just there, it was just very naturally there.”
She couldn’t stop gushing about Lillis’ take on Maggie, telling her she didn’t want to embarrass her but that it was “the hopefulness in Maggie, I find the most heartbreaking.”
The Adults is in theaters now and well worth the watch for how brilliant Hannah Gross and Sophia Lillis are!
(featured image: Universal Pictures)
