Jessica Barden is one of the mainstays from the very beginning of this project with the short film. How did you first meet her and what first struck you about her that made you think she was right for this co-lead role?
It was maybe seven years ago when we started to do auditions for the short film version. We saw so many kids at the time. It was just at the time of Game of Thrones, and we saw a lot of those guys who are in the similar age,
and I remember Jess walked into the audition and she spoke to us in a Russian accent for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I remember looking at the producer at the time and I thought, “This girl gets the part.” She’s just got a way with her where she can be completely out-there, but she can also be completely vulnerable at the same time and that’s what she’s like as a person.
I guess she’s kind of crazier than Alyssa in real life. Alyssa is kind of a conservative version of Jess, so it perfectly worked for me. She just was everything that the character was and more, and that was made even more evident to me when she met Chuck and Chuck was like, “You’re the girl for my book.” And that just made me feel like we’d done it right.
