'Chemical Hearts' director Richard Tanne explains why Lili Reinhart was the perfect star to play the lead role in the coming-of-age movie
- "Chemical Hearts" director Richard Tanne spoke to Insider about working with Lili Reinhart on the new movie, which hits Amazon Prime Video on Friday and is based on a 2016 novel by Krystal Sutherland.
- Tanne told Insider that Reinhart, who stars as Grace Town and served as an executive producer, was collaborative and "has very strong instincts as a storyteller and knows what she believes in."
- The director also told us that the "Riverdale" star was the right choice for this film because of "her intensity of feeling" and "her commitment to the truth."
Director Richard Tanne spoke to Insider about why Lili Reinhart was the perfect actress to play the starring role in the coming-of-age movie "Chemical Hearts."
"I didn't have to give Lili any advice," Tanne told Insider. "She has very strong instincts as a storyteller and knows what she believes in."
"Chemical Hearts" centers on 17-year-old Henry Page (Austin Abrams), who has never been in love. By the start of his senior year, Henry says that nothing interesting or noteworthy has ever happened to him, despite the teen years supposedly being the most thrilling time of a person's life. That all changes when he meets Grace Town (Reinhart), a mysterious transfer who becomes his co-editor for the school's newspaper.
Tanne said that Reinhart, who also served as a first-time executive producer on the film, sent the project over to him after she read the novel and was interested in portraying Grace. From the start of production, the pair were on the same page, which Tanne said made the process even more seamless.
"We set out to make this movie together," the director told us. "I had a very specific vision that she got behind and that made a really big difference. All the choices that I made, having the backing of the star is a very influential tool at your disposal."
He continued: "We were aligned. We were constantly in dialogue and I would say that her instincts as an actress and as a writer herself, that's an added bonus because you have someone who's always asking for the truth. She's always trying to get at the truth, and that's where I'm coming from too, so it worked out well."
Reinhart's search for honesty was another quality that made her the ideal person to take on a complicated and complex character.
"Lili's intensity, her intensity of feeling, her commitment to the truth, she's someone who's at once incredibly open and also has to be guarded because of what her life is, because of the reality of her life. These are things that mesh perfectly with Grace," Tanne told us.
Meanwhile, Tanne described Abrams as "someone that feels so deeply, so sensitively."
"He's somebody who in life, much like Lili, is incapable of a false note," the director said. "And then that translates to the screen too, just an authentic guy."
Tanne added that "there are elements of both of them that match up perfectly" with their characters, and he had one piece of key feedback for the actors.
"My only condition for both of them was, 'Just open yourself up to the camera. Let us in. Let's try to move any veil of self-consciousness aside and let's just explore.'"
For his part, Abrams told Insider that he and the "Riverdale" actress worked together in the past, so they "already had somewhat of a rapport with one another," which made playing love interests easier.
"That was super helpful when it came to a connection and then I think we just have a general instant connection, which is something that you just kind of get lucky with," the actor, who stars on an upcoming Netflix series called "Dash & Lily," told us.
"From project to project, sometimes that's there, other times it's not. But thankfully on this one, we just kind of got lucky in that way."
The movie, which will be available to stream on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, is based on the 2016 book "Our Chemical Hearts," written by Krystal Sutherland. The film was written, produced, and directed by Tanne, who made his feature directorial debut with "Southside With You" in 2016.
Watch the trailer for "Chemical Hearts" below.