Darby and the Dead Tackles Grief, Female Friendship, and Classic Teen Movie Tropes
Led by Riele Downs and Auli’i Cravalho comes the new Hulu Original movie Darby and the Dead about an introverted girl who gains the ability to see dead people after a near-death experience. She makes a side hustle out of helping ghosts, but things change when the recently deceased queen bee of her high school Capri insists on an epic Sweet 17 in order to move on.
At the Darby and the Dead press conference, Aul’i Cravalho opens up about getting into the mindset of Capri… and how she’s not your typical mean girl. “I’ve never played a character like Capri before and there was a lot of fun back story. My favorite part about being an actor is working on the back story, especially for Capri. I didn't want to hate her. I have to be her, I must love her. I must understand where she's coming from, even if she's crass, even if other people see her as mean. I'm not mean, I'm just honest,” she explained. “And then my voice immediately pitched up and then I talk really fast and I talk with my hands because they gave me really beautiful nails. Even working with the hair stylist to see how the hair would change, I remember giving points of I want to feel like I'm going to war and whatever that would mean. There was a lot of room to play and I really appreciated that.”
Capri wasn’t the only character who consciously moved away from teen movie tropes. “A big way that we were different from other stereotypical mean girl movies was that there was a lot of writing that had [girls] worrying about if we were fat or our pimples or who was taking us to prom. We had a lot of things that were originally set in that were pretty stereotypical and we all were in the writing room. We were all like, no, no, no, no. These aren't gonna be these girls,” shared Kylie Liya Page, who plays Taylor. “We actually give them a foundation. We want to be real people and we want to represent women in a more positive light.”
“Our cast is so incredibly diverse and perfectly displays the actual world that we live in and what it’s like to be around this age, living in this time,” expressed Genneya Walton, who plays Bree, with Piper’s Nicole Maines continuing: “[We are] breathing new life into what we think of as the popular girls […] and what this film does spectacularly, and what is groundbreaking about it, is that it showcases diverse and marginalized communities, particularly women, thriving and existing at the top of the food chain, which we never get to do. It was really refreshing and exciting to get to be a part of that and to get to be the top dog for a second.”
The cast talked about digging into classic teen movies like Mean Girls, Bring It On, Heathers, and Clueless to inform the film, especially when it came to style. “Even our wardrobe tried to give nods to different films that we loved. We wanted to just make a fresh take on the classics that we grew up with, but also not make it too mean,” said Maines. “It’s fine to have characters that are funny or dumb, but there’s depth to them in a way of exploring grief and what it means to also have performative grief and figuring out how to move on with that. Riele does a really great job of also giving deadpan humor to the camera, bringing the viewers into that journey.”
“Plaid skirts, the suit, the two pieces, just all the fashion inspiration. It was very, very much modern day Clueless I would say,” said Page, with Cravalho referencing the nod she made to Cher Horowitz, “I brought my own little puffy pen to set and it made it to the poster!”
“I was so impressed by how focused they were on style because she does go through a style evolution throughout the film,” said Downs of her character Darby. “She sort of starts, you know, dark. She goes totally the opposite direction and then she ends up in a place that’s sort of in-between. They definitely did a lot of fun things with that and she starts a few trends along the way too. There’s a lot of fresh things that we combined to some of those old movies that I feel makes it different.”
Walton continued: “My favorite part [was] sitting down and trying to figure out who these characters really were because given their position in the movie, we could’ve fully taken all of the Mean Girls group tropes, but we were trying to find more depth to that and truly show that we’re just teenage girls that happen to be popular and cheerleaders. But are also still trying to find their way throughout life and what it means to be a teenager in this current digital age.”
The heart of the film is female friendship, specifically the one built between Darby and Capri. “You have Darby and Capri who are opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their characters, [but] there's still a bond and tough love you can feel between them,” shared producer Eddie Rubin. “What exists in-between the two [can] bring them together or [tear] them apart,”
Production even made a friendship map to help track everyone’s journeys. “Every time there were these fights, we would just plug into that. What does this fight mean about the friendship? What is actually happening? They're reverting to these childhood hurts,” said director Silas Howard. “So I think showing this way of not competing, but pushing each other to our best selves, really highlights that type of friendship. Tough love in places and admitting wrongs. I think we just don't see a lot of that, but the friendship map comes to mind and that being the engine of the film.”
Cravalho expressed how much the friendship map helped in keeping her on track when filming scenes out of order. “To have the friendship map and to watch [Darby and Capri], it's like magnets. We get closer because we're being honest and then we push apart again, but there is always that desire to come together and really connect and really be friends,” she shared. “Capri is loud and obnoxious at times, but, really, they're both judgmental, Darby’s simply turning to [the] camera. Capri's more of a kiss ass, whereas Darby has realized it doesn't matter. But Capri helps Darby come out of her shell. It's really precious what the two characters bring out of each other. More empathy, not only for each other, but for also all of the students at the school. And as Darby moves on through her life, she can now open herself up to more of the living, which was just a really beautiful storyline for a teen movie, you know?”
The team shared what they hope people take away from Darby and the Dead. “It’s a teenage comedy, but it’s about real topics [and] dealing with grief. How do you step into the spotlight of your life when it’s so much easier to stand on the sidelines and judge everybody else? I think what Darby does and what Riele does so beautifully in this movie is she really transforms,” said producer Adam Saunders. “It’s about the courage of living because we don’t get to be alive for very long. We have to embrace that time that we get.”
“Whether you're dead, alive, straight, gay, trans, Black, white, at the end of the day we're all humans and we have emotion and being in tune with that […] and understanding the people around you and their emotions is such an important part of life,” said Rubin, with Howard adding: “The pain that any of us have been through in life are actually the strengths, the points of connection.”
“I hope audiences take away the healing nature of laughter and how beautiful it is to be open to your friends and family about grief. I know it's a teen movie, but everyone experiences loss [and] bringing that to light is important because it's just too difficult to do alone,” shared Cravalho, while Walton said: “I hope that people choose to […] be kinder and gentler with themselves as they move about life because we're all trying to figure out who we are. That's a never-ending journey in life.”
Darby and the Dead begins streaming on Hulu on December 2.
