Scarlett Johansson

And it's rare to feel surprised when you read a script.

A lot of times scripts are very formulaic or they're based on, you know, IP that you're familiar with or

You know, you can kind of see where the story is going, but this one just felt really original and unique.

Well, I mean, the humor certainly was written in Tori Kamen, who wrote the script.

You know, it was a sort of thesis that she built around her grandmother, who she was very, very close with, who similarly moved back to New York after many decades of living away.

You know, as a much older woman and those very biting lines, those salty lines, even from Rita's character, Bessie, are some of them are verbatim her grandmother's words.

And so I and I grew up in New York.

I, you know, had a.

Jewish grandmother and who was also could be very dry and she was very funny.

And I don't know, that humor felt familiar to me.

It was like dialogue, vocabulary that I just got.

And so that was baked in.

And of course, having June...

with her incredible comedic timing and, you know, her expression and her vocal cadence.

And, you know, she's the perfect person to be delivering those zingers.

But as far as the sensitive, you know, balance and subject matter, you know, I think as a director—

And I think even as an actor, too, it's not really my job to kind of judge these characters and what they do.

Or if I have any judgment, I'm probably not the right person to be supporting the story.

I think it's, you know, I hope that the audience, if I do my job right, by the end of the film...

is able to abandon any judgment and have empathy and compassion for the characters and certainly for Eleanor's deception and understand why she does what she does.