’Suncoast’s Director & Cast Discuss Club Scenes, Wild Parties & Sleepovers

The Big Picture

• “Suncoast” is a powerful and heartwarming coming-of-age movie.
• The film is based on writer-director Laura Chinn’s own experiences in the early 2000s.
• The cast, including Nico Parker, Laura Linney, and Woody Harrelson, deliver exceptional performances in the film.

If you’re looking for a powerful and heartwarming movie, writer-director Laura Chinn’s semi-autobiographical debut feature, Suncoast, is one to check out. Starring Nico Parker (The Last of Us) and featuring Woody Harrelson and Laura Linney, this Sundance Film Festival premiere is a unique coming-of-age story Chinn based on her own experiences.

Suncoast is set in the early 2000s, when Doris (Parker) is on the precipice of young adulthood. At school, she is awkward and soft-spoken, and at home, Doris’ mother (Linney) is too preoccupied with her comatose brother’s health to really be present. While having to grasp the gravity of her brother’s situation and find a connection with her mother, Doris finds unexpected friendships with the kids at school and an activist (Harrelson) who comes into town for a controversial case.

During their conversation in Park City at the Collider interview studio sponsored by Film.io, Chinn and stars Amarr, Daniella Taylor, Ariel Martin, and Ella Anderson all sat down with Steve Weintraub to share the behind-the-scenes of their movie. They talk about club scenes, wild parties, sleepovers, and surviving a real-life hurricane during production. Chinn shares the similarities and which details were tweaked for the big screen, discusses the talent of Linney and Parker’s “lightning in a bottle,” and tons more.

You can watch the full interview in the video above, or you can read the transcript below. Suncoast is now streaming on Hulu.

‘Suncoast’ Is a Unique Cinderella Story

COLLIDER: So most people watching this right now will not have seen the movie yet, so how have you been describing it to friends and family?

LAURA CHINN: It’s a drama with a lot of lightness and comedy in it. It’s about a teenage girl who’s coming of age in an environment that’s unique to someone that is 17. Her brother is in hospice, he has a few months left to live, and he happens to be at the same hospice as a woman named Terri Schiavo, who had a very big, national, politicized case in Florida in 2005 where I happened to be at hospice with my brother in 2005 at the same hospice as Terri Schiavo. So, it’s based on that, but there’s also a lot of invented details about this sort of Cinderella journey that this girl is going on. She’s making friends for the first time, who are these lovely kids — I mean adults. They’re adults, but they’re kids to me — but these lovely people. So this is where a lot of the joy and the light and the heart comes from is that this 17-year-old girl is getting a crush for the first time and being accepted for the first time and going out and partying in nightclubs for the first time while also dealing with this very serious thing at home.

There Are No Mean Girls in Laura Chinn’s Coming-of-Age Movie

One of the things that I commend you on is you have limited screen time with the friends and all of you guys feel like very individual characters that all got to shine. Can you talk about giving everyone those moments? And for you guys, talk a little bit about the reaction reading the script for the first time and what you thought of it and your emotional connection.

CHINN: It was important to me that they weren’t just a stereotypical teen blob. I wanted everybody to have a different point of view, and I really wanted them to be more protectors of Doris than where you might normally see them being mean or judgmental. I think that for the most part, they’re very protective and welcoming to her, and that was important to me.

DANIELLA TAYLOR: When I first read the script, I fell in love. I read it and I understood who Laci was within like the first scene that I got in the audition process. You wrote just these characters so incredibly well that it really took no work to bring it to life at all.

ELLA ANDERSON: When I first read the script, of course, I cried like a baby. It’s just wild that these words can have so much power when they’re just these little black thingies on a white paper, and it makes you bawl, and then you’re in your room after. But I think, also, every time I read one of my character’s lines, Brittany, I was like, “Wow, I know this girl who’s just like this and I know this girl who would say this,” and I almost was audibly speaking my lines out before even having the role. It was just so realistic and yet so poignant and funny.

ARIEL MARTIN: I think what Laura does so well is she writes characters that are real and human, and everybody has a little bit of good in them and a little bit of bad, and there’s not a single protagonist or antagonist. They all have such layers and dimension. I think even with my character, Megan, she’s maybe the meanest to Doris, but it’s not coming from a place of just being stereotypically mean. With her, it’s coming from insecurity, and she feels bad about herself. It’s like she has layers to her. It’s not the stereotypical mean girl; she’s deeper than that, and I think all of them are deeper than that. I think it’s hard to do when you have such a big cast, but Laura did it so perfectly, and gave every single person such a beautiful story, which, as an actor, I’m so appreciative of.

AMARR: For me, when I first read the script, I was actually with my mom and my dad. We were at, I think, some rooftop restaurant or something like that, and I was reading through it, and I was like, “Wow.” I was talking to my parents just telling them, like, “I kind of talk a little bit like this.” And it just seems like this character, it’s not exactly who I am, but I also, like you said, I know people that are like this. But then also, I felt so comfortable with the role, and for me personally, that’s not really too easy to do. Like it didn’t feel like a character, it felt like a person that I was playing, which I love.

Laura Linney Gives a Powerhouse Performance in ‘Suncoast’

One of the things that you did such a great job with is the way Laura [Linney] plays, essentially, your quote-unquote mom. She’s both difficult and loving. You get frustrated with her, but you understand where she’s coming from. Can you sort of talk about writing the role and also Laura’s performance, because she really threads that needle?

CHINN: She’s incredible. I mean, Laura is so incredible. Laura is just this rare breed, this person who can do this thing where she’s saying things that are kind of hard to hear, she’s behaving in a way that you’re like, “Oh, just be nicer to your daughter,” but at the same time, there’s so much humanity just pouring out of her face. You just love her and you see where this woman’s coming from; she’s losing her son. These are very real emotions, and the way that anyone would be. The character’s not my mother. My mom and I had a totally different journey and story, but it was in an effort to capture a lot of the emotions I felt as a teenager who is not getting the same amount of attention as the sick kid, who’s being forgotten and feeling like that, and how to capture six years of illness with my brother into, like, an hour-and-a-half movie. So that was where Kristine came in. She’s sort of this powerhouse, in a way, to capture all those emotions. But she’s amazing.

I mean, the whole cast, with these kids, too. There was only one. There was only one. We auditioned tons of people, and then you’re just like, “That is Brittany and that is Megan.” Like there was no deciding. So, with every one of these roles, it felt like everybody put on this second skin and became these people in a way that was so rewarding and magical.

This is for all of you guys. You obviously have a limited shooting schedule, you know what’s in front of you. You see the shooting schedule, what is the day you have in your brain circled in terms of, “I am so excited to film this,” or, “Oh my god, I am so nervous to film this?”

ANDERSON: That’s a great question.

MARTING: That’s a wonderful question.

ANDERSON: The club scene! I’m underage, so I was like, “Yeah, we’re going to be in the club!” No, not actually. [Laughs]

CHINN: Well, she was 17. You were 17! Very, very underage. It’s so far from 21, 17.

ANDERSON: And of course, I was actually fake sneaking into the club with the bouncer and I got the whole experience, which was really fun. I won’t ever be doing that again.

Sure. [Laughs]

ANDERSON: [Laughs] I just remember looking forward to it, and I remember the outfit was crazy and yet I was still really excited to wear it. What about you guys?

TAYLOR: I don’t know, I looked forward to every single day. I’ve never felt such peace on set. Laura had made the space incredibly comfortable, and just made you feel very confident in your choices and what you were doing. I’ve worked with amazing people, but I’ve just really never felt so comforted and accepted, and it was just an incredible feeling. I loved going to set every single day because I would come back to the house afterwards and I’d just be like, “I was just there and I was just having fun.” Usually, I’m, like, in my head — none of that, and it felt great.

AMARR: For me, I would say I was most excited and a little bit nervous about the party scene that you’ll see. We’re all playing Jenga, playing different games, and doing maybe certain things that we probably shouldn’t be doing. That was a lot. I was nervous for certain things, certain clothes might be off. You never know you. You gotta see the movie to see it. But yeah, it was funny, though, but it was very, very fun. I remember I was talking to my mom and my dad about it, and I was like, “Yo, guess what I gotta film this day.” They were like, “What?” [Laughs]

MARTING: Oh, that’s such a good question. I have no idea. I really loved the sleepover scene with the girls. I think that was just such a sweet scene. We had so much fun. We were sitting down, we had actual popcorn and M&Ms and snacks.

TAYLOR: And ice cream!

ANDERSON: It was really fun!

AMARR: I wasn’t invited.

CHINN: They were in their pajamas. I was like, “You guys know we’re still working, right?”

MARTING: It never felt like work. We all love each other so much, and that day, I remember I loved it so much.

ANDERSON: We were just giggling in between takes, having the best time.

CHINN: Gosh, I mean, every day I was really excited and really nervous. I know the ending scenes are very emotional, and so those were scenes that we really, as a whole crew and cast and everybody, were like, “We’re not talking about those scenes. We’re not putting pressure on those scenes. We’re not going to talk about what goes on in those scenes. We’re just gonna let those scenes unfold.” And it was a really sacred space that our first AD held, that everybody held. We did private rehearsals, just me and the actors, and really tried to keep it organic and not feeling like, “Oh, you have to have this emotional reaction in order to succeed today.”

It was really important that that was not placed on especially young Nico. And she’s just such an organic, natural talent. What pours out of her is like lightning in a bottle. So, it was all about making sure that she was so safe and protected. Those were definitely scenes that we waited until the very end of the schedule so everyone was as comfortable as they possibly could be with each other, and you really see it with Laura and Nico in that final scene together. That to me was the most important scene of the movie, when they rejoin. That was definitely one that I was like, “Okay, we circle this. This is a sacred space.”

So I love talking about the editing process because it’s where it all comes together. For you, you get in the editing room, what were some of the surprises that happened that you didn’t expect going in?

CHINN: Our editor, Sara Shaw — and shoutout to her, she’s not at Sundance and she wants to be — she’s an angel and a genius, and she’s amazing. We spent such a long time in post together, and we had this luxury, and Searchlight was so supportive, that we really got to experiment with things and play. We removed some scenes that I really loved, like individually I loved those scenes. But I think when you looked at the whole whole thing as a whole, it was affecting different arcs and maybe watering something down that didn’t need to be. So, that was surprising to me, the amount of scenes that we pulled out of the movie and how much that strengthened the movie. But I mean, Sara and I just got so creative. Someday we’ll show the two-and-a-half hour editors’ assembly of this movie. It’s very different. [Laughs]

With something like that, for people who don’t realize an assembly cut is where you put everything in. With that two-and-a-half hour version, was that a version you were happy with or you’re like, “Oh no?”

CHINN: So you know what’s funny is they call it the suicide cut, right? They’re like, “You’re gonna watch this and you are going to want to end it.” That’s what every director told me. They were like, “You’re gonna watch the editor’s assembly and you’re gonna want to move to a different country and quit the business.” So, I was very prepared. So I saw the runtime and I was like, “Two hours and 35 minutes. This is Titanic!” [Laughs] I was like, “This is a long movie.” But I sat down and I watched the whole thing, and I really was like, “It’s there.” I was never like, “Oh no, what is this?” It’s there. I mean, the performances were all there, everything. It was so clear that stuff needed to come out, but I never felt hopeless or sad or depressed. I was very heartened by the editor’s assembly.

So, I like throwing a curveball every once in a while. So, for all of you, [to Chinn] because you’re also an actor, if someone has never seen anything you’ve done before, what is the thing you’d like them watching first and why? And it could be this film, but it could be something else.

TAYLOR: Suncoast.

MARTIN: Yeah, Suncoast. 1,000%.

AMARR: Yeah.

ANDERSON: Suncoast.

CHINN: Suncoast. I’m not in it, but Suncoast.

ANDERSON: It’s so very good, and you will just not regret the time you spend watching.

I definitely want to touch on the fact that you guys are at Sundance, but you’re also gonna be in theaters and you’re gonna be on Hulu pretty soon. What is this like for you guys? Because I’m sure when you’re making it, you never know what’s gonna happen. It could go anywhere or it could just not ever come out. So what is it like to be premiering at Sundance and going to theaters and being on Hulu and this whole whirlwind?

CHINN: I’m in a total dream. I don’t know about y’all.

MARTIN: Oh, same. I feel like I’m not here. [Laughs]

CHINN: It’s really been an out-of-body experience. I feel like every single person who worked on this movie gave their whole selves to it, truly. It was such a collaborative experience and everyone just busted their ass and cared so much about telling the story. So the fact that people are gonna get to see it, and that all those 100-plus people, their hard work and blood sweat and tears are gonna be viewed by audiences is so exciting and so amazing. And going to be in theaters, you know, I think this movie on a big screen is such an experience. Este Haim, our composer with her partner, Chris Stracey, the music that is in this movie is incredible, and when you see it in a theater and when you see these kids and the humor and the colors of Florida and the emotional ending and Nico Parker’s genius and Laura Linney and Woody Harrelson, it just feels like a movie theater movie, you know? And so I’m so thrilled that people are going to get that chance to see it that way.

TAYLOR: It does feel like a dream. It really does. I have really big reactions and I screamed when my team told me that it got in.

MARTIN: Oh, me too.

TAYLOR: I just couldn’t believe it. It’s a huge thing. This is huge, and it’s such an honor just to be a part of it.

For soon-to-be fans of the film, what do you think they would be surprised to learn about the making of this movie?

ANDERSON: Well, we didn’t actually film it in 2005. But also we lived through a hurricane.

MARTIN: We lived through a hurricane!

TAYLOR: We filmed in Charleston. Which hurricane was it?

ANDERSON: Hurricane Ian. I’ll never forget you, Ian.

TAYLOR: We had to evacuate to a hotel.

MARTIN: We all went to a hotel together and we lived in the same building for a few days, and we would come downstairs and meet up and play card games, like so many games. I hate hurricanes, but it was a bonding experience for us, also, to go through that together. But yeah, we lived through a hurricane.

Suncoast is now streaming on Hulu.

Special thanks to our 2024 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Film.io and supporting partners Pressed Juicery and DragonFly Coffee Roasters.