The Phases of Character Development with ‘His Three Daughters’ Writer-Director Azazel Jacobs

From writer-director Azazel Jacobs (French Exit, The Lovers) comes this bittersweet and often funny story of an elderly patriarch and the three grown daughters who come to be with him in his final days. Katie (Carrie Coon) is a controlling Brooklyn mother dealing with a wayward teenage daughter; free-spirited Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is a different kind of mom, separated from her offspring for the first time; and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) is a sports-betting stoner who has never left her father’s apartment — much to the chagrin of her stepsisters, who share a different mother and worldview. Continuing his astute exploration of family dynamics in close-knit spaces, Jacobs follows the siblings over the course of three volatile days, as death looms, grievances erupt, and love seeps through the cracks of a fractured home.

Familial loss and grief are hard to contend with, especially when there’s strain and estranged relationships in the fold. But luckily for storytellers, it’s great tinder to ignite under characters you’re developing. And filmmaker Azazel Jacobs utilizes this device wonderfully in his latest feature film, His Three Daughters, which has been recently nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Award for Best Screenplay. It may be a slow burn for some, but the character work and dynamics, are beautifully carried through the film by three stellar actresses of our time, Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne (also nominated for a Gotham Award), and Elizabeth Olsen, respectfully, are worth watching and taking note of in every frame.

Writer-director Azazel Jacobs recently spoke with Script about tapping into his personal experience caregiving for his parents, how he developed these three distinct characters, the limitations and possibilities of shooting on film, and taking a chance on a third act that has sparked divisiveness with some viewers, but has ultimately resonated on a deeper level for many.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: The three sister characters have such a wonderful authentic dynamic with one another – very familial. What was the process behind developing their characters?

Azazel Jacobs: I was thinking about that this morning, because I don't have kids, so the idea of learning how to be a caretaker of my parents, how to use my parents as models of how to take care, trying to understand as a parent, you go through all these phases, and you figure out things and as the kids are growing, you're shifting with them. But in this case, I got called back to New York City, a big part of it to become a caretaker and learning how to get things as much as in order, to understand how to pay somebody else's bills, all these things were constantly shifting each day.

I found myself really shifting as a person according to the hour of the day – in the morning, I was very much a Katie, and I could switch over to Christina by afternoon and then by night as Rachel. It really was that switching of personalities that I realized, as I was writing random notes, more diary notes to myself, that separating these into siblings, separating these into people, would help me get a better understanding of what I was going through and how this could be approached in terms of telling the story, which I was eager to do.

Sadie: Did you always have this idea set to be a feature film, or did you think of approaching it through a different medium, like a play?

Azazel: No, it was always a film for me, because I've only been immersed in film my whole life. One of the things that I was really chasing after, which I felt only film could handle, was how the pacing of this experience has felt to me and how time is compressed and very unlike real life, which, as far as I understand, plays, you really got to know how to function in real-time. In this case, there's barely a breathing cut between some scenes and the other one, so they feel like they're just going on, or sometimes we're missing a gap in between. The pacing, which is somewhat awkward, is very much on purpose, especially in the beginning, because that felt reflective of this experience in terms of how time has moved.

And I think the same thing in terms of framing that I thought a lot about when - even the very beginning draft or writing of it - I really thought about how we're going to reveal these sisters who's sitting, where this idea of starting in a theatrical way with each of them is one thing, and also having a Katie against the white wall. So, it felt like this addition, but then revealing the kind of depth behind Rachel. And there's a lot of stuff where I'm just playing with the idea, like you don't even know that Rachel's sitting at the table at dinner until we reveal cut to her side over there, or just how tight things are.

The idea of how to reveal the apartment so slowly or in a very fragmented way, was it really essential to this version of the story? I'd be happy to see the play version. It's not something that I personally want to take on. But that would be wonderful to see what the differences are and how that would be. Besides the acting differences, it's hard for me to imagine a set of this. The apartment was so important to me and to the storytelling as well.

Sadie: In terms of your casting and these characters, once you had your cast locked down, how much were these incredible players coming in and giving it their shape and voice – was there any point that you went back to the script to write to that?

Azazel: There was no rewriting. I think writing with them in mind helped me feel what their voices are, even though a lot of times supposing what their voices are. I only truly had worked with Lizzie [Elizabeth] Olsen in the past, so had a sense of how her voice is. But for the other ones, it's really based on other work that I'd seen, or just our interactions in life. There was no rewriting. I can't imagine how that time would have worked, because everything moved much quicker than normal, and usually, at least in my life, in terms of films, I wrote a draft, got it to pretty much where I wanted to be, sent to them, they signed on, we figured out when exactly everybody's schedule could go, start moving very quickly to hit that time. And the rehearsal was just a few days before shooting, we were able to rehearse inside of the apartment, which I think was really essential.

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And also do screen tests with Sam Levy, the cinematographer, which I think is also something that I think of as rehearsal, that is really important, just in terms of just feeling what film burns. Having been so many years for most of us that hadn't shot film, just to feel that the test itself was limited in time, and how quickly we'd have to move and how much preparation before each shot was pretty shocking. And just got to the system where you're like, oh, there's gonna be a clock ticking all the time in a lot of different ways.

Sadie: With filming inside, was a lot of that practical lighting in the apartment?

Azazel: It was really augmenting practical lighting. That's much more the thing. Sam and his crew did such a beautiful job of seeing where the sources were, how to work with them, definitely, if we knew we're shooting night scenes. There’s practicals in terms of, ‘OK, these are lamps that have been in this house for years,’ at least in our story version.

We knew shooting film that the chances are it's gonna be beautiful. It's very hard to mess up the look of film. So, you can get away with a certain amount of lack of lights. But it also has its own mind. So, there's certain scenes that you're just going, like the big fight scene, we don't know exactly why that turned out so particularly yellow, or at least I don't - maybe Sam does. But I do know that it was completely right for that mood. I'm seeing a monitor, which is just a reference point, but you're not really seeing the footage until the next day. It just had a vibrancy that made sense for that particular scene. Ultimately, we get it enhanced in the color correction and make sure that we're embracing what was naturally given to us.

There was a lot more lighting than you could imagine. There was a lot more bounces to shape light. Everybody in there, crew-wise, was very experienced, especially for a film of this size and at this budget. But at the same time, everybody was there to figure out how can we work with the elements that we have and make it a benefit?

Sadie: I keep thinking of that one shot where Katie is standing near the living room window and she's talking to her husband on the phone, and you see the sun and the clouds shifting through the window, in the room, and on her. There's just something so perfect about the tone of that scene, especially for her character in that very moment.

Azazel: The light shifting is a big thing. I love it so much. When people talk about the play version, I just can't imagine it, because we're natural storytellers - we see the light shift, and we feel as if there was some kind of symmetry between how the heavens are working with the story. So, when Lizzie Olsen is sitting on the park bench, she goes into this story, there's a major sun that comes out just for a moment, the cloud passes by and lights up her face, and she's talking about this community that she found. I remember when we're shooting it, I was like, that means I cannot use a different take. I can't cut. It has to stick to this one take. It was such a wonderful performance. And then this additional thing happened that I could never have a plan for, that I think is essential for the film, ultimately, as well.

Sadie: Once we break into the third act, Christina brings up her last memory of watching movies with her dad. And talks about how movies and books get it all wrong when portraying death and grief. And this is all happening while we the audience are watching a movie about death and grief. And then we shift POV when their dad Vincent comes out, and we’re in this dreamlike sequence. In some way he gets closure and we think the sisters are getting some kind of closure, or what he hopes they could have moving forward. How did you initially come about developing that scene and running with that as your third act and landing on that emotional beat?

Azazel: The writing of the monologue that Christina says about this was really my hesitancy of dealing with death and film. I just felt generally misguided when in my own experiences with death and how I witnessed it in film. I have seen it handled well, but at least when it first hit at whatever age I was, it wasn't at all how I understood it from films or TV. There's this strange experience when losing somebody, or even losing a relationship, where something significant happens much later on, when you realize, ‘Oh, my life is different now. This person's input is completely gone.’ And I can feel the absence, and suddenly that identifies that person to me, this shadow, this outline of them, is what they were giving me.

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And it's a super hard thing to convey in art. It can get done. But it was really the thing that restrained me the most when trying to figure out how to do this in an honest way. Talking about the dishonesty was maybe a cheat of just saying with me acknowledging that this can't do it. This can only indicate what it is and illustrate it. And also at the same time as it's indicating and illustrating, it's also going to be failing at it - it has to be because this is such a personal thing that happens over a long time.

Her getting to say that, and then me getting to go for this fantasy that truly felt like something that I needed…if it spoke to them in the way that it spoke to me, it was worth it. I didn't know that it would speak to as many people as it has. I really thought that this would be a bit more divisive. I know that for some people, it really doesn't work, but they ultimately come back as well. To find out how generous some viewers have been as well, which is, ‘You know what, this kind of going off in this path didn't work for me, but ultimately, the film resonated in this way for me.’

I want to believe that those words can happen and that the sisters, in their own way, get to hear these words, that we get to hear that, that we as the audience are worthwhile, that we are important enough to get to hear these words, whether the sisters doesn't, whether the father doesn't actually say those things. It's the fantasy of filmmaking that I really embrace and enjoy. And when films do that thing, it shakes me up in a way that it gets me really excited. 

His Three Daughters is available to watch on Netflix.