Reminders Of Him, Interview Lauren Graham

Graham: First one comes in mind, second chances and forgiveness, but then I really love the different forms of love in this movie. And I really connected to that when I read the script of it's like, oh, I understand each character has a different form of love they're portraying and how they portray that love. And I wanted to be one of those characters for sure.

Whitford: One theme is: are you safer to hold on to your grief or to let it go? Bradley's been saying today it's a loss, in a way, to let go of anger and grief and to move forward. You feel there's a disloyalty in letting life continue, but I think it's a worthy pursuit, I guess, is forgiveness of yourself, of others, and I think that's a big theme in the movie.

Pankow: Yeah, I really do. I mean, I'm doing publicity, obviously I would lie, but I'm not. There's so much... it's a film of a certain genre, but there's a really universal appeal about the quandary of, you know, forgiveness under the most difficult situations. And yeah, grief is really tricky because if you let go of grief, it can feel like a betrayal of the person you've lost. And watching this community and this family navigate that is a really kind of beautiful, you know, universal human, unfortunately difficult part of life.

Graham: She was just a totally supportive presence. And you know, you could go to her, but I think as insecure performers you just felt like she trusted you. And that's a big deal.

Pankow: Yeah, I was going to just say that: trusted. With the scenes I had with these lovely people, as well as Mica and Tariq, it just was like, I felt very trusted. I was nervous a little bit at first because I was like: "Am I doing something potentially that she hadn't envisioned?" And she actually came up to me one time and said: "I didn't see that in Scotty, and you made me see it." And that was like the biggest compliment I could have gotten from Colleen. And that was kind of the goal, honestly, is for to find that.

Whitford: I just think she is just a person of great empathy and also, because there are flashbacks, memory... she had very clear vision of how she wanted things to look and how memory affects us. And it's especially because in this case it's Mica's memory of what happened, so it's not the truth necessarily. She just talked a lot about the layers of how we picture something in our minds. And I had seen she directed an adaptation of a dear friend's book called "Love at First Sight" for Netflix, I don't know if you ever saw it, it's so good. And so I knew... and she took this very beautiful love story but kind of amplified it in color and in atmosphere, and I think she did that here as well. She's just got a really beautiful mind.

Pankow: Yeah, she's a... just a beautiful soul and she made everybody feel like she wanted us to collaborate, which is why I think people will see great performances across the board in this because she's wanting to engage your initiative, which is what a secure director does. And she's just a lovely, sane, kind human being without an irony deficiency, which is great. You agree?

Graham: Yeah, I would have to agree with that. That's exactly what I was thinking.