Laughter Is the Best Medicine in Sick Girl

Nina Dobrev, Sherry Cola, Hayley Magnus, and Stephanie Koenig in Sick Girl (Photo by Lionsgate)

What's the worst thing you've ever done? If you're Wren Pepper – the titular star of black comedy Sick Girl, as played by Nina Dobrev – it's lying about having cancer to make your friends hang out with you.

Writer/director Jennifer Cram has never done that, but she understands how a perennial party animal like Wren could get herself in that mess with her friends from college, who all seem to have this adulting thing down. Cram referred to the script as “a little bit of therapy” about what she and her oldest friends were starting to experience.

She explained, “We were expecting our 20s to be when everything changed and not too much actually did, and then in our 30s everybody started getting really into our careers and getting married and having kids and moving to different states. It was the first time we had really been dealing with these challenges, and it was scary, and you didn't really know how the friendships were going to turn out and if they were going to last.”

Nina Dobrev as Wren, the walking definition of extended adolescence, in Sick Girl (Photo by Lionsgate)

Austin Chronicle: Your 30s are when body parts just start inexplicably hurting.

Jennifer Cram: I remember once I pulled my back out washing my hair. I was just lifting and went, How is that even possible? It's just brutal.

AC: It’s that point when time starts to actually move.

JC: “I guess I'm not going to live forever. Maybe I have to think a little bit.” It keeps getting worse, but you have to have a sense of humor.

AC: And we all think, “Oh, parties will always be like they’ve always been, but now there will be canapes.” No. Everyone’s on the phone checking what's happening with their kids.

JC: Or they’ve brought their kids. I always ask my friends what they do with their kids on planes. “Oh, we just let them play with their iPads for the entire flight.” The screen time rule goes out the window.

AC: So of the core four friends, who do you see most of yourself in?

JC: I would have to say Wren. It’s true, although I’ve never done anything like this, and I don’t think my friends would be so kind. If I had them accidentally shave their heads, they might murder me. But I was one of the late bloomers in our group – and especially living in this industry, where everything takes 10 times longer, and living in L.A., where everyone has Peter Pan syndrome – I definitely felt like I was lagging behind them in the whole “growing up” thing.

AC: So what kind of realizations came with that self-recognition?

JC: That I might drink too much. (Laughs) No, I don't drink as much as Wren, but I might have in my early 30s. Honestly, a lot of it is just becoming OK with the fact that you can’t compare yourself with other people and their lives. Everyone has a different path, and you’ve got to embrace it as much as you can. Comparing yourself to other people, or trying to catch up with them, or trying to slow down, is a recipe for disaster.

AC: So you could have just kept the core idea of someone who is afraid of losing their friends and comes up with a madcap scheme. But when Wren screams “Cancer!” that’s a moment when as a storyteller you can lose the audience.

JC: It was definitely a concern of mine and a lot of people I pitched it to. Part of it is that you have to let yourself have unlikable characters, or characters who do unlikable things. I think too often people are worried about going there.

A lot of it is having an actor who can pull it off and won’t lose the audience, and I got very lucky in that regard, but I also think it’s about having something that you're so passionate about. The core of it is that she loves her friends, and she’s doing something terrible, and she’s immature, all those things, but she truly loves her friends. We were hoping that would come across, and that people would at least be able to understand that. If not to understand why she did what she did, at least to understand the desperation of not wanting to lose people who are very important to you.

AC: And that scene works because you can see the panic in her eyes as she says it, like she’s wondering who said that.

JC: Nina did an amazing job, she really did. And I did try to set up, throughout the movie, times when she was trying to tell the truth and it wasn’t quite working out, so she doesn’t seem gung-ho, but it was definitely tricky, definitely a fine line.

AC: When did you realize she was your Wren, that she had this layer of chaos and regret that Wren needs??

JC: She and I went out to dinner to talk about it, and I was initially intrigued when her name came up, because I’m a fan of her work and I love everything I’ve seen her in – but I haven’t seen her do much comedy. She was doing a sitcom at the time, but it was her first real foray into comedy and this is not a sitcom. It’s darker and grittier.

But when we sat down to talk, it was just a lot of what she was saying. We were on the same page. She had specific parts of the script where she was like, “I have these really close relationships with my friends, and when I read this it really touched me, and I really want to be a part of it.”

I made it pretty clear. “Look, this girl’s a mess. You’re gorgeous, and I really need to get in there and mess you up.” She went, “I want you to do that. Go for it.” Of course, there’s only so much you can mess her up. She still looks gorgeous, completely without makeup, and there’s not much you can do about that.

Sick Girl is on VOD now.