The Unbreakable Boy stars Zachary Levi and Jacob Laval spoke to ComingSoon about the new inspirational drama, which tells the true story of an autistic boy with brittle bone disease. Based on the book of the same name by Scott LeRette with Susy Flory, it is directed by Jon Gunn. The film arrives only in theaters on February 21, 2025.
“From Kingdom Story Company, the team behind Jesus Revolution and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and Lionsgate, the studio behind Wonder, comes The Unbreakable Boy. When his parents, Scott (Zachary Levi) and Teresa (Meghann Fahy), learn that Austin is both autistic and has brittle bone disease, they initially worry for their son’s future,” says the synopsis for The Unbreakable Boy starring Zachary Levi. “But with Scott’s growing faith and Austin’s incredible spirit, they become ‘unbreakable,’ finding joy, gratitude, and courage even in the most trying times — an extraordinary true story about a father and son learning together that every day can be the best day of your life!”
Tyler Treese: Zachary, your character feels like he’s failing as a father, and he winds up turning to alcohol. How is it portraying the pain he’s going through? Because he deeply wants to connect with his son and what he expected being a father would be, but life just had different plans.
Zachary Levi: Yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head.
In two months’ time, I’m about to become a father for the first time myself, which I’m very excited about. But even though I was not a father at the time, I was an uncle. Still am an uncle. And I know what it’s like to be in a position in my life where life is not unfolding the way that I expected it. And I think that everybody can resonate with that, right? We all have these ideas of what our life is supposed to be, where our life is supposed to be going, and then things don’t add up, and it becomes a sense of anxiety and turmoil. And that can often lead to a lot of self-medicating.
I have found myself in that position myself, so I was able to dig into a lot of that in my own personal experience. And I think that there’s something really beautiful and redemptive about that, right? Because we’re not perfect and we don’t end up having this perfect life that we all expect that we’re supposed to have.
I think that one of the main themes of this film is this radical acceptance of not what we’re expecting but rather the life that God gives us and the beauty in all of that. Scott sees these imperfections of this osteogenesis imperfecta and this autism, and he is like, “No, no, no, this is not a part of the plan. This is not what I was hoping for or expecting.”
So he resists and he resists, and he resists only to be brought to his knees in, I think, a really beautiful way to finally recognize that he was struggling first and foremost with his own self-loathing and not loving himself. His son is the perfect vehicle and blessing in disguise that is showing him what it means to accept and to embrace and to love unconditionally. Then that helps him to really heal and evolve as a human being. So, it’s powerful.
Jacob, you have a great performance in this film, and you get to deliver one of the all-time great monologues — the “You can’t handle the truth” speech from A Few Good Men — in this. How was it getting to perform such a memorable scene in this film?
Jacob Laval: That’s a good question. It was very fun to do, I’d say. It was difficult to learn, but me and my acting coach, we went into our room and we took it piece by piece. We did like a couple sentences and then a couple sentences, and eventually we just put it all together. It wasn’t too difficult to do just going into the room doing it again and again. But it was fun, I think that scene is a big part of film history, and so it was fun to just read it out to the screen like that.
Zachary, did you get to meet the real Scott Scott LeRette, and if so, what stood out about talking with him?
Levi: Yeah, we were really fortunate that even though it was peak pandemic, the LoRettes were able to join us for a lot of the filming. So we were able to spend quality time with them — kind of glean their energy.
Although we’re all very different in real life, there’s plenty of crossover in just being human beings. Scott is a good man who loves his family and sees the power of the transformational journey that they were all on, which is what led him to writing the book that this film is based on to begin with.
So, for us, I think the challenge or the onus was to just do right by them. You know, to tell their story authentically. Fortunately, Jon Gunn, our writer-director, he is so talented. He wrote such a beautiful script. So when you have, when you have a great script to begin with, the blueprint’s there, then it’s just a matter of following that blueprint and making sure that everything is told with authenticity. And I think that we were able to accomplish that.
Thanks to Zachary Levi and Jacob Laval for taking the time to talk about The Unbreakable Boy.
