Olivia Cooke plays a leukaemia-stricken schoolgirl in Me And Earl And The Dying Girl. The British actress and her co-stars talk us through the tear-jerking film – and reveal what it was like shaving Cooke’s head for the role
If you can handle the inevitable river of tears when watching Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, it’s well worth the cost of your cinema ticket and king-sized pack of tissues.
In fact, the moving coming-of-age tale, based on Jesse Andrews’ bestselling young adult novel of the same name, is already generating awards buzz, having won Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award.
It follows Greg (Thomas Mann), an awkward high-school student who befriends a fellow pupil called Rachel (British actress Olivia Cooke), who has just been diagnosed with cancer. The Earl in the title is Greg’s pal (played by RJ Cyler), with whom he makes short film parodies of classic movies.
We met rising stars Cooke, Mann and Cyler, and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, to get the low-down on the poignant film.
NAILING THE CASTING
Rachel is played by Oldham-born Olivia Cooke, who adopts a US accent for the role. The 21-year-old’s first big acting role was playing Christopher Eccleston’s daughter in UK TV drama Blackout, and director Gomez-Rejon has praised her “amazing instinct, naturalness and authenticity”.
There are no big A-list names in the film, something Gomez-Rejon, who has previously worked on Glee and American Horror Story, thought suited the feel of the movie. “If you all of a sudden have a megastar, I think tonally, it could be seen as a stunt casting. So luckily we found the right group of adults and kids and they worked together as a wonderful unit,” he explains.
One of the first of the ’grown-ups’ to sign up was Connie Britton, star of small screen country music hit Nashville. The normally impeccably-groomed star is pared down to play Greg’s mother, who encourages him to forge a friendship with Rachel. Nick Offerman, who Parks And Recreation fans will recognise as deadpan moustachioed Ron Swanson, plays his dad.
“Connie was wonderful about wanting to be de-glamourised for the role. She just wanted to play a wonderful, earthy mom and Nick was this very eccentric classics professor,” says Gomez-Rejon. “Everyone brought this wonderful humanity to it, and that was all that mattered.”
BUILDING A BOND
“The night before we auditioned together, Thomas and I had dinner, so I knew we both just really wanted this project,” says Cooke. “Thankfully, the chemistry was real.”
Of her rapport with Mann and Cyler, she adds: “It’s something you can’t really fake, so if we hadn’t got along or there was something that you found annoying, then those things begin to grate. Luckily there was nothing about these two that I didn’t like; I loved them so much. It’s just palpable on screen.”
Mann, who previously appeared in 2013’s Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, adds: “It’s not like there was some secret formula or friendship workshop that they sent us to.”
It was Cyler’s first professional acting experience, but his co-stars took away any first-day nerves. “First thing Mann does is give me a hug,” he recalls. “That is what made me realise I could enjoy myself. Then I met Olivia and it was the same thing. Working with the two of them was magical. We became like a big family.”
KEEPING IT REAL
Testing out bald caps to depict Rachel’s post-chemotherapy hair loss proved “a complete failure”, so Cooke decided she would need to shave her head, to look as realistic as possible.
“She really led that charge and was like, ’This is the right thing for this character, how can I be true to this character and be true to other people who have leukaemia?”’ says Gomez-Rejon.
“It was fascinating to see what shaving her head and then shooting a scene the next day did,” he adds. “She was in the zone. She became Rachel.”
Cooke enlisted her co-stars’ help to shave off her thick brunette locks.
“It was funny at first, because we shaved a Mohawk in and were laughing manically,” recalls the actress, whose hair has now grown back into a pixie crop. “For it to all be on the floor within 10, 15 minutes, it was scary. I’ve never felt my scalp before, I’ve never seen the shape of my head. I sobbed for a bit, but then it was good.”
DRAWING COMPARISONS
Links will inevitably be drawn with The Fault In Our Stars, the 2014 weepie about a terminally ill teenage girl (played by Shailene Woodley), who strikes up a romance with a fellow cancer sufferer. But the cast insist the films are poles apart.
“It’s so weird to even talk about it that way, because we never thought about how do we make it different to this movie or that movie, we just kind of made our own movie,” says Mann.
Cooke adds: “If people go and see the movie because they think it’s going to be like The Fault In Our Stars then we win, but it’s very different.
“You hope they don’t go into it with their own preconceptions, and just go in with their eyes wide and let it take them on a journey.”
Me And Earl And The Dying Girl is in cinemas on Friday, September 4.