She said, “I’ve never seen you so lit up. I went immediately downstairs and pitched Emily the entire movie in about an hour and a half of what I saw, what I wanted to do with it and how I wanted it to be about parenting, and she said, “No, you’re not gonna rewrite and star in it,” and I said, “I’m not?” And she said, “No, you’re gonna direct it, too.” So it was Emily who really pushed me. I wanted it to be the best metaphor for parenthood that I had ever experienced and I wanted it to be, as weird as it sounds when you look at the poster, I wanted it to be a love letter to my kids. As soon as I finished the script I had this vision of what I wanted for the movie. You’re not only looking out for their wellbeing and that they’re happy but you’re also wondering, “Are they still alive?” You’re actually checking their breathing.
Before I read the script, the producers called and said, “Would you ever act in a genre film?” And I said, flat out, “No.” I said, “I’m too much of a scaredy cat, I’ve never been a big genre fan,” because the 12-year-old self in me was so scared by “Nightmare on Elm Street.” I just thought, I’m gonna put that part of my subconscious to bed, and they said, “You should really read it, the one-liner’s really good.” And I said, “What’s the one-liner?” And they said, “Well it’s about a family that can’t talk and you have to figure out why.” And I thought, “Damn it, that’s a good one-liner!” So for me, you said it, I was reading the script thinking there’s no way I would act in it, let alone do anything else, and instead, unlike any other moment in my career, call it stars aligning or the universe opening up or something, I was holding a 3-week-old girl while reading about a family that, “What would you do to protect your kids?” And as any young parent knows, those early days of parenthood are genuinely terrifying.
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