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Miss You Already A Wild Emotional Journey of Two Best Friends

Described by director Catherine Hardwicke as “a story about two best friends who are going on a wild emotional journey together,” MISS YOU ALREADY is a comedy-drama, starring Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette as two best friends living in London, tackling the struggles of breast cancer and IVF and how it affects every aspect of their lives.

The Story of Breast Cancer

The idea of MISS YOU ALREADY has been with writer Morwenna Banks for many years. “It is a work of fiction, but it happened that breast cancer touched my life and the lives of several people around me, within a short frame of time,” she recalls. “It seemed to me that it was almost an epidemic. I felt very passionate about trying to write something that showed what happens when the bomb of breast cancer just falls into the lives of ordinary people. People with families and, specifically, younger women, are what this film deals with – the lives of relatively younger women. When I started writing it, it was seen as something that was more of an issue for older women. I had witnessed this tragedy happen in the lives of several families and so I wanted to write specifically about how it feels, trying to deal with absolutely everything we’re all trying to cope with, including small children, lives, friendships, relationships – and having cancer. That’s what the film’s about, with the added thread and theme of a very close female friendship, running through.”

Producer Christopher Simon met Catherine Hardwicke 12 years ago at the London Film Festival. “She had directed ‘Thirteen’, which had just come out and was an incredible film. I also fell in love with Catherine. I thought she was an extraordinary filmmaker and I needed to work with her.” After he joined forces with Morwenna Banks, everything fell into place very quickly: “Catherine, Morwenna and myself all worked on the script together, over a very short period of time, really. It happened very fast. We worked in her house in Los Angeles, we table read with some actors and, within a very short amount of time, we were in production.”

Catherine fell in love with the script almost immediately. She remembers, “it had all these juicy ingredients of real life. You would just be rolling along happy and excited, then you get slammed with something super-difficult, a crisis. How do you deal with it? Do you deal with it with grace and humour and courage, or do you let it just knock you down? And these are things your family have to cope with, when someone is diagnosed with an illness; your friends cope with it, your children… It’s just this big messy mix of life.”

Big Cast of Actors & Actresses

“Our casting was great,” explains Catherine Hardwicke, “before I even knew about this project, Toni (Collette) had fallen in love with it, two or three years ago. So, she’d always expressed her passion and wanting to be involved. Of course Toni is amazing and I’ve seen her in so many things, she’s just a chameleon. She can just do anything, she’s fearless and she’ll dive into anything, with 100% commitment.” Toni was cast as Milly and everything clicked from there.

Casting a believable and compelling match for Toni’s character was tough for Catherine, “It was exciting to figure out that challenge. Who would be such a cool partner to work with Toni Collette? And when we all thought about Drew, she’s this amazing person, kind of the American sweetheart and everybody loves her. We all love her.

The leading men in the film have very important roles and lives of their own, Catherine wanted actors with real character and authenticity. “Drew’s boyfriend in the movie is Paddy Considine. I wasn’t super familiar with him, though I’d seen him in several movies. He’s often thought to be almost brooding and tense, but then he also has a flipside and we see him in these crazy comedies like ‘The World’s End’. So who is this person? He’s also in ‘The Bourne Ultimatum’!

Although he had never played a character like Kit before, Catherine had seen Dominic Cooper in ‘The History Boys’ and ‘The Devil’s Double’ and thought he was an incredible, versatile actor, who she thought would gel well with Milly and her rock ‘n’ roll spirit. “So, when I was thinking about Dominic Cooper, I was thinking ‘wow – this guy is super cool.’ He’s played a lot of dark characters and a lot of fascinating characters, but he’s never really played the role of a Dad, married, with kids. So Dominic just became this very affecting character in the film and you just kind of love him. He just opened up and revealed all these interesting layers, that I think we’ve never seen from Dominic before.”

The Locations and the Elements

“It was exciting to work in England, for me,” says Catherine. “I think that, for every film maker, we just love to discover a new place, new architecture. I’m an architect, so I loved being in London and seeing all the juxtaposition of the old and the new and how could that inform what I was doing.”

Described by Catherine as a ‘beautiful cultural melting pot’, London, where the majority of the movie was based and filmed, was an ongoing inspiration to the director. “The city is so rich in history and in so much beautiful architecture, from so many eras, and the new with the old is very inspiring. We tried to capture that in the film, where you have a city that embraces people from all over the world.”

In direct contrast to the hustle and bustle of London, the film is partially set on the Yorkshire Moors. Catherine explains, “There was something I wanted to fix with the script – all of it was in London. I just thought, if you’re facing your own mortality, how cool would it be to just have the girls take a crazy road trip. I had been in England about three years before and I’d taken this mad road trip to the Moors, because I wanted to see where Wuthering Heights was written. So I told Morwenna Banks about that idea and she incorporated it and we added the whole trip into the script.

“So you’re always looking for things that are just going to make you feel the story more in your bones, more fun and visual, more exciting, so it will just draw you in more.” Tyson Ritter (‘Ace’), remembers the thick Yorkshire clouds enhancing the drama of his scenes. “My favourite thing was being on top of the moors and there was this massively emotional scene and we’re in the clouds. Every five minutes, the weather would change and, as we were looking down on Ilkley, where we were shooting, it was just breath-taking”.

Further locations were added to the movie during filming, as London offered such a multitude of diverse and beautiful locations that inspired Catherine. “…another day I was driving to the set and I look out the corner of my eye and I see this big cool wall. This art installation, that’s under a bridge, was this blackboard wall and it said ‘before I die’, and there was chalk and you could get in there and write on the wall what you want to do before you die. It was so inspiring and cool.”

Jess (Barrymore) and Jago (Considine) live on a houseboat in London. Despite the difficulties of filming on a real boat rather than in a studio, Catherine wanted the authenticity that came with the location. “I walked into several of those narrow boats and I could barely film with my iPhone, so I thought ‘we’re going to need a bigger boat!’” laughs Catherine. “But we found this cool barge that was right there in the Thames and it was just so funky and this fun woman lived there and had made it a really cool place to live. So I said, I’m going to film on a real boat, even though it’s a bit tricky to film on, but it just added authenticity. You could see other boats out in the water and you could hear the seagulls and the houseboat community.”

From director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen), starring Drew Barrymore (Never Been Kissed, Charlie’s Angels, The Wedding Singer) and Toni Collette (Muriel’s Wedding, Little Miss Sunshine, About A Boy) comes an honest and powerful story following two best friends through the highs and lows of life.

Synopsis

Friends since childhood, Jess and Milly can’t remember a time they didn’t share everything –secrets, clothes, even boyfriends; their differences are the glue that binds them together. That is until Milly is hit with the life changing news that she has breast cancer and needs Jess’s support more than ever.

As Jess tries to balance her own life with being there for Milly it is only a matter of time before the pressure on their friendship becomes intolerable.

A powerful story for every modern woman, MISS YOU ALREADY charts the obstacles life throws in our path and celebrates the bond of true friendship that ultimately cannot be broken, even in life’s toughest moments.

They say opposites attract. Milly (Toni Collette) is the woman who has everything: a successful career, a devoted husband, and two gorgeous kids. Her best friend is Jess (Drew Barrymore): Jess works in a community garden, lives in a boathouse with her boyfriend Jago, and desperately wants a baby. Friends since childhood, Jess and Milly can’t remember a time they didn’t share everything –secrets, clothes, even boyfriends; their differences are the glue that binds them together. That is until Milly is hit with the life changing news that she has breast cancer and needs Jess’s support more than ever. As Jess tries to balance her own life with being there for Milly it is only a matter of time before the pressure on their friendship becomes intolerable. A powerful story for every modern woman, MISS YOU ALREADY charts the obstacles life throws in our path and celebrates the bond of true friendship that ultimately cannot be broken, even in life’s toughest moments.