I remember reading the script and feeling that the scenes where Nadine is “talking big talk” were so real. She’s got it all figured out, she’s seen how it goes down in the movies, but when she finally gets with the guy in the car, she realizes that this is, in fact, not how it should go down. All of a sudden, she’s like, “Can you tell me what your favorite color is? Let’s have a conversation.” That’s what she really wants, in the end, and that’s what other people around her often miss. We want certain things and we will do certain things to get them. In speaking for Nadine, what she wants is connection and conversation. She wants to be understood by somebody, and yes, down the line, she’s obviously thinking about other things and wants to experiment and wants to explore. But that’s not the initial want.
How did you go about forming the character of Nadine with Kelly Fremon Craig?
From the audition process onward, Kelly and I would be in a room for what felt like twenty minutes and it would end up being two-and-a-half hours of pure conversation about life. We’d talk about how one situation leads to another, how a certain thing will feel like the end of the world, and then when you wake up the next day, you’ve forgotten all about it and it’s a new day. Having those conversations with somebody who has not only been there but understands all of those experiences was so liberating, as was the opportunity to express so much of what I’ve gone through. People, in some ways, think I dodged the bullet multiple times because I wasn’t in a traditional high school up until a certain point. Being able to express the fact that I’ve gone through those same things, despite not being in high school, was important to me. Though the film takes place in a high school and it follows Nadine through her teenage years, it’s not a high school movie. It’s about growing up and about figuring life out at an early age. It’s about having obstacles thrown at you left and right, and then having to overcome them. I’ve obviously been through that as everyone else has, whether or not they’ve been in a traditional high school.
Just as “The Edge of Seventeen” is not a typical high school movie, Woody Harrelson’s character hilariously subverts every cliché embodied by the typical inspirational teacher.
Totally! The amount of time and effort and thought he invested into every line that came out of his mouth was amazing to me. Even though I knew what he was going to say, time and time again he’d deliver the line and I’d be like, ‘Where did that come from?’ [laughs] Mr. Bruner is the father figure that Nadine goes to, looking for validation, and he’s not always going to tell her what she wants to hear. The beauty of the relationship is in how honest it is, apart from being funny, dramatic and weird. Of course, it’s so absurd for a teacher to be saying half of the things he says to her, or for a student to go to him for half of the things she goes to him for. But there is a mutual understanding between these characters. I feel like we’ve all at some point had that someone that we know probably isn’t the best person for us, but they’re the only person and we are going to go to them anyway, and for Nadine, it’s him.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmoqakmr%2B3tcSwqmiemZzCs7XNoGStoJmjtLR5zq6rZp6fp3qpsdGsnKWeXZ2uqrjEnmSsrJWeu6exy51kqKZdqbWmecSdnp5ln5t6tLHVnqWtnZWj