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Voicemails for Isabelle writer-director Leah McKendrick says the film was inspired by several true-life events.
A raucous set at a comedy club, her sister moving across the country, and a period of grim contemplation helped form the script.
Voicemails for Isabelle, McKendrick’s second feature film as a director, is currently streaming on Netflix.
Comedy, drama, trauma, and sisterly love were all thatched together to make the new Netflix romantic comedy, Voicemails for Isabelle.
Writer-director Leah McKendrick spoke to PEOPLE on June 20 about the various strands of inspiration she pulled on to create her second film as a director, and third as a screenwriter.
Voicemails for Isabelle stars Zoey Deutch as Jill, a novice baker living in San Francisco who shares a tight bond with her sister, Isabelle (Ciara Bravo), who lives in Austin. When Isabelle dies after a battle with cystic fibrosis, Jill keeps on leaving detailed voicemails about her life on her sister’s phone — however they’re not being sent into the void, but rather to Wes (Nick Robinson), a realtor who finds himself falling for the quirky girl on the other end of the line.
According to McKendrick, the first seed of the film was planted at a comedy club, after a pair of sets began to stir up ideas about voicemails left for recipients who may never reply.
Leah McKendrick in Los Angeles on June 9
Credit: Amanda Edwards/Getty
McKendrick attended this comedy showcase over seven years ago, she told PEOPLE, where her roommate at the time performed a set about her father’s long, rambling voicemails. “Then the next comedian gets on stage and she goes, ‘It’s so nice that your dad calls you. My dad hasn’t called me in three years.’ And everyone’s kind of like, ‘Ooh.'”
The second comedian landed the punchline that her father hasn’t called because “‘He’s dead.’ I was the only one that laughed. And then it really got the wheels turning, and I thought to myself, it’s so funny, this idea of a girl who keeps waiting for her dad to call her back.”
That thought kicked off a swirl of follow-ups: “Then I thought, ‘If my dad dies, I won’t be waiting for him to call me back because my dad doesn’t call me back and he’s alive.’ And then I thought if my sister died, I’d be waiting for her to call me back. And then I thought, no, if my sister died, I would just keep calling her.”
McKendrick then found herself in a position similar to her protagonist’s, when her own sister moved to New York to attend college. She began leaving “long rambling voicemails” about “how hard it was to make it in Hollywood and how this town didn’t want me,” which led her to think “what a horror story it could be if somebody were to ever hear my most unfiltered self. But you would know that if somebody fell in love with that unfiltered self, it would be real.”
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According to the streaming data analytics tracker FlixPatrol, Voicemails for Isabelle is currently the No. 1 movie on Netflix, after premiering a mere three days ago.
Deutch told PEOPLE in a separate interview on June 20 that she was “very hesitant” to return to romcoms after 2018’s Set it Up, costarring Glen Powell. But she agreed to to take on “this one was because it felt deep and about grief and about love after loss and about sisters… I feel super grateful and couldn’t love this movie more.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
