Wish You Were Here stars Isabelle Fuhrman, Mena Massoud, & Gabby Kono Abdy talk about their roles in Julia Stiles’ directorial debut, which is out in theaters on January 17, 2025, and on digital on February 4, 2025.
“Julia Stiles makes her directorial debut in a brilliantly warm and romantic film based on the bestselling novel, Wish You Were Here. Isabelle Fuhrman, Mena Massoud, Jennifer Grey, and Kelsey Grammer star in a fascinating movie about leaving the everyday world behind to take a chance on true romance. When the perfect night with a perfect stranger ends suddenly the next morning, Charlotte searches for answers and meaning in her disappointing life until she uncovers a secret that changes everything.”
Tyler Treese: Isabelle, Julia Stiles played your mom in Orphan First Kill. Did you two really hit it off? It’s quite the co-sign that she’s having you lead Wish You Were Here, which is her directorial debut.
Isabelle Fuhrman: I am so beyond grateful. We had such a great time working on Orphan: First Kill. We were making it during Covid. So, Julia was kind of the only person that I was allowed to hang out with.
But to my benefit. I mean, I was her biggest fan, and I was so nervous to meet her. And it just kind of like cut all the nerves away, because she’s so humble and down to earth. We just really got to know each other well.
And after we wrapped the movie, [Julia] sent me this script and was like, “I’d really love for you to play Charlotte and for the world to get to know you how I’ve gotten to know you, because I feel like everyone only sees you as this, you know, scary, manipulative, murderous character.” And I was like, “that would be amazing.”
So I felt really touched that she thought of me and to get to work with her as an actress and then as a director just was such a gift. She’s so immensely talented and she knows this genre, the space, and I grew up watching her movies, which were all in this kind of 2000s rom-com genre. So to be the lead of that kind of film that I’ve grown up watching and my idol in that genre, Julia Styles, as Mena said earlier, the queen of the genre is directing the movie.
It just felt like a very surreal, incredible experience.
Mena, I was really impressed with your character of Adam in Wish You Were Here, and what was so interesting was that, obviously, a lot went into portraying the terminal illness, and that’s a huge factor in it, but you also made sure that he wasn’t defined by his illness. You get to see his charismatic side. You get to see his personality. How was it finding the balance of showing that struggle he’s in, but not being defined by that?
Mena Massoud: It was something that Julia and I talked about a lot, and we tried to figure it out. I was speaking to a family friend of mine who was a neurosurgeon out of Toronto, and he kind of walked me through all the different things that could happen when you have brain cancer. And initially we were playing around with having him have paralysis on half his one side of his body, which does happen sometimes. It’s kind of different for everybody what kind of symptoms they have when they’re going through this. But then we decided against it, and I think it’s for part of the reason that you just said. We still wanted to show the charismatic part of him. So you do see a scene when he’s on crutches and in a wheelchair because he’s lost some strength in one side of his body.
So we wanted to find that balance, like you said. So it was part of that. And a part of it I think people go through, especially kids that have cancer a lot of the time, is they forget that they have it because they’re trying to be present in their life and still live out their last days. They’re not thinking that it’s their last days.
And I think that was the same with him. I didn’t want him to be thinking about that all the time. He meets this incredible woman that’s the love of his life and he’s trying to enjoy that as much as he can. And so you see him in the film sometimes get lost in that and then come back to reality and it’s that balance of forgetting about it and then being shocked by the gravity of it all. Yeah.
I feel like hearing you guys talk about Wish You Were Here is gonna make me cry again. So I’m trying not to.
Fuhrman: It’s so easy to cry. Oh my gosh. It was like Mena is so lovely in this movie and so fantastic.
Gabby Kono-Abdy: Both of you! I cry just thinking about it.
Gabby, you have such a great energy in your performance here. Helen and Charlotte are seen as such great friends. We see that your character’s practically part of the family. How is it finding that familiarity with Isabelle? Because it comes across very authentically in the film.
Kono-Abdy: Oh, thank you so much. It was easy. You know, we had so much fun. We really fell in love. Like, yes, it’s Adam and Charlotte’s love story, but like, really it’s Isabel and Gabby’s. We just explored and tried new things.
Honestly we had met many years prior at a pool party, coincidentally, and it was right after I had optioned the book and we were talking, Isabel was writing something and I was talking to her about a book that I had just optioned.
Then the way that the world works is so interesting and coincidental. There are no coincidences. Julia ended up saying, what about Isabelle Fuhrman? And I was like, “Yes, I would love to have this full circle moment with Isabelle.”
And so I think reconnecting several years later, it was kind of like we had our own cosmic connection. It was easy. Helen and Charlotte really became so much a part of Gabby and Isabelle’s friendship story.
Fuhrman: It was so funny to get a phone call, and I was like, “Gabby Kono? How do I have this phone number in my phone? Who is this?” She’s like, “Remember me? We met at this pool party.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, you told me about Wish You Were Here. She’s like, I’m gonna be playing Helen, and I’ve been producing the movie. From there, Mena arrived like two days after we had started filming. He was sitting with us, and Gabby and I were just like… [glance at each other] “You guys have known each other for way longer.”
Kono-Abdy: He’s like, “It’s only your second day on set.” I’m like, “Yeah, I know.” We’re just in love.
Isabelle, when they first meet in Wish You Were Here, Charlotte’s a little cold on Adam. But things quickly take a change for the better after they go out on that date. What did you like about the relationship development? Because we see just so much emotion packed into such a short time span, even just that first night of them together has them thinking about each other forever onward.
Fuhrman: I think it’s very relatable for a lot of people to have this moment where they meet somebody, and then it’s like this sort of snap realization. That there’s some kind of… Gabby’s been calling it a cosmic connection. It’s like this soul tie that you all of a sudden are faced with.
I think Charlotte’s coldness is more like, ‘my best friend’s drunk and who’s this guy handing her food?’ But really it’s out of the goodness of his heart. And it’s in that realization, and after they spend this wonderful night together talking about everything under the sun and really getting to know each other, that she’s like, “Okay, what is this gonna be?”
That relationship builds though, because it’s like she can’t let go and understand that. ’cause she knows that this was something really special. When they do get reconnected by the universe not that long after it, it is really Charlotte’s decision to jump into that relationship because she understands like why Adam kind of disappeared and that had nothing to do with her. And I think it’s a really beautiful story of unconditional love and choosing to love somebody regardless of what the circumstances are. I feel like that’s such an important message that so many people need at this time is. To hold the people you love a little bit closer and a little bit tighter. Everything can change in an instant. So nobody really knows how much time they have with somebody. And that’s such a huge part of this film.
Thanks to Wish You Were Here stars Isabelle Fuhrman, Mena Massoud, & Gabby Kono Abdy for taking the time to talk about the Julia Stiles movie.
