Greg Jardin’s debut feature, It’s What’s Inside, is now streaming on Netflix! I had the opportunity to break down the movie with the writer/director and stars Alycia Debnam-Carey, Gavin Leatherwood, Nina Bloomgarden, Devon Terrell, Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Reina Hardesty, and David Thompson.
A pre-wedding party descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend arrives with a suitcase containing a mysterious device capable of inducing body swaps. Tempted into playing a twisted game, the group uncovers hidden truths, suppressed desires, and deep-seated grudges. As their lives are swept up by deceit and startling revelations, IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE peels back layers of intrigue with its mind-bending twists and turns.
“I think the key for us really was getting one week of rehearsals before we started filming, which is very rare but Greg, our director, was amazing at making sure we had a lot of time and we also had really generous and collaborative actors,” Debnam-Carey expressed. “We were all really wanting to get immersed in each other’s characters and so, it created an openness and ability for us to all really communicate, collaborate and I think that was essential into really getting to become those other characters.”
“I talked to Greg and I was like, ‘I think there needs to be a physical nature to the character,’ but also, saying man all the time but that you can feel the energy,” Terrell explained. “It was more like energy swaps within most of the characters.”
Leatherwood agreed, “We wanted to capture the essence as opposed to doing just an impression of each other but you use every tool you have at your disposal to do that, whether it is a physical mannerism or whatever but I think our focus was finding the energy of each person.”
Thompson expanded on what that week of rehearsal included, sharing, “We all kind of learned each other’s mannerisms a bit and experimented with each other’s characters, and we’re recording everything and it gave us kind of resources and videos. But for myself, I feel like I had different music for different characters, different playlists. I feel like that was pretty helpful.”
“I think we all had to kind of make sure we were swimming toward the same destination on this one just ‘cause there was so much going on and we were all kind of having to change perspectives throughout the story so often,” Morosini added. “We had to make sure we’re really on the same page each and every step of the way. So, this was a process where everyone really had to lean into one another.”
When I asked about their characters’ tells, Bloomgarden commented, “I mean, Maya’s definitely a character in herself and she already kind of has that mellowish, maybe stoned, like, ‘what’s going on there,’ vibe to her that I think was pretty — absolutely stoned but everyone just has a different internal energy. Like, Maya’s very different from Brooke’s internal energy, so I think that was a difference as well.”
“Shelby’s nervous system is on high alert all the time, her amygdala is just overactive so anytime she’s getting the hang of the game and getting the hang of just being around people, so that was one thing that we talked about,” O’Grady said, referring to her and Hardesty, who swap in the movie. “She’s got no chill.”
“It was in the script for Brooke, she repeats herself a lot,” Hardesty told me. “She’ll say one word multiple times and that was definitely her biggest tell and also, she’s very fidgety. She has a very buzzy, anxious energy and I feel like there’s a lot of hair, a lot of gum chewing, a lot of just spazzy energy that I think was crucial when switching bodies.”
“The twist that Forbes was not Forbes was something that I came up with in the very nascent stages,” Jardin revealed. “I got very excited about that. I was like, ‘Oh man, if the guy with the suitcase wasn’t even the guy, that would be nuts,’ and so, I was super stoked on that. In the initial idea, it was not his sister, it was his lackey at work that he had wronged. I sent the script to a bunch of friends and I got the collective note that it’s a cool twist, but it’s kind of a bummer that this character has nothing to do with the rest of the group and I remember I was talking to one of my friends on the phone, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, it could be Forbes’ sister and she could be the girl who hooked up with Dennis at this party.’ I already had that plot point of Dennis hooked up with a girl at a party so it kind of fell into place.”
We discussed what they considered to be the key to playing multiple characters, learning from each other, the story’s big plot twist, the ending scene, and more.
Watch my interviews below:
