John Krasinski Talks 'A Quiet Place,' The Supportive Push Of Emily Blunt & The Elemental Fears Of Parenthood [Interview]

John Krasinski’s horror drama thriller “A Quiet Place” is in some regards, the “Get Out” of 2018: a surprise, smash hit horror film released early in the year that played for months, received critical acclaim, adoration from audiences, and became a huge success at the worldwide box office. Moreover, like Jordan Peele’s 2017 film, “A Quiet Place” is the rare horror thriller in the awards conversation. The film, which grossed $340 million globally and has spawned an in-development sequel, has earned a Golden Globe and a Best Actress Screen Actor’s Guild Award nomination for Emily Blunt, Krasinski’s co-star and wife.

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It’s hard to find an analog for a transformation such as Krasinski’s. Known as nerdy, friendzone-y good guy Jim from NBC’s “The Office” for years, Krasinski easily could have been pigeonholed into this kind of schlubby comedic role. Instead, he took on dramatic roles (“Away We Go,” “Promised Land”), wrote and directed his own films (“The Hollars,” “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men“) and even transformed into a beef cake-y action star (Michael Bay’s“13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” and more recently, Amazon’s “Jack Ryan”).

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Krasinski’s latest trick was of course going into a totally different mode of filmmaker: a blockbuster director with a Hitchcock-ian eye for tension and suspense. But “A Quiet Place” comes from an emotional one, a place of elemental, primal fear and this humanist touch—the concern for your children and sacrificing everything to keep them safe—is what has transformed the movie from being a popular horror movie to a modern day classic. I spoke to Krasinski a few weeks back on the circuit.

Busy big year for the Blunt/Krasinski fam this year. Babysitters must be making a killing while you guys are on the awards circuit.
[Laughs]. Yeah, we’re both very fortunate. Emily’s so terrific in “Mary Poppins Returns,” I’m very happy for her.

So, I saw this movie after the fact, purposely watched no trailers, read and knew nothing other than the basic premise. As soon as I saw it, I was like, “oh, this is a total response to being a parent.”
Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I wanted to articulate how I feel as a parent and as beautiful as it is to be a parent, it’s also terrifying. People ask me all the time why I think did it do so well. I certainly don’t have any crystal ball, but hopefully, it’s the human element. You get feedback from fans and they say, “this is a movie about family,” or.” Oh, my God, I saw this. I just had my baby and this is exactly what it feels like to have kids.” What would you do if your family was in this situation? Would you sacrifice yourself? It’s just so much fun to be tapping into something much deeper, much more universal.

“It [was a] weirdly romantic [moment] like she’s proposing to me or something [laughs]. I said, what are you saying to me? And she goes, ‘You have to let me do this role. Can you let me, can I have the role?’ And I just screamed, ‘YES!’ on the plane.”

Right, you hold your first tiny vulnerable newborn in your hands and it quickly becomes: how do I protect this thing? What if something horrible happens to it? And that’s totally an immediate character motivation.
That’s right. It’s funny, I didn’t know genre that well, I didn’t grow up with it. I was one of those kids that saw “Nightmare On Elm Street” in the nineties. and basically blacked out. So, I didn’t see much of [those kinds of films] after that. Then this movie came along with all these cool creatures, but the first script was much more of a horror film and I thought, “this is interesting, but to me, oh my God, if I could rewrite this, I could make it the greatest metaphor for parenthood.”

I hadn’t realized until later that you hadn’t self-generated the movie yourself. Tell me about reading the script and then seeing the spark of what you wanted to transform it into.
No two ways about it: this is one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard of, let alone got to work on. The premise is so good you wonder how they hadn’t done it before; it was a perfect spec script. There were exciting elements, but for me, what I wanted to bring to it was trying to connect every single point, every single moment back to the family.

All these ideas came at me while I was reading it. I’d never had this happen in my career, where I saw the movie right from the beginning. I put the script down, I ran downstairs to Emily who was holding our three-week-old-baby and I said, “I’m going to rewrite this and star in it,” and then here are all my ideas. And it sounds crazy, but I pitched her the exact movie that I directed. The original script didn’t have the opening, didn’t have sign language that it was just one of those things where I thought all these things could basically relate to family and if it doesn’t relate to family, I don’t want to put it in the movie.

That was my take on the whole thing and it was Emily who said, “No, you’re not going to rewrite and star in it,” and I said, “I’m not?” And she said, “No, you’re going to direct it too.” And I thought, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s a huge studio movie. I’ve never done that.” I mean it’s a little budget for the studio, relatively, but for me, it was the biggest movie I’ve made and I’ve never done visual effects and she said, “I’ve never seen you so lit up and your take on this and where you want to take the script is, is some of the best ideas I’ve heard.” So, anyone that likes it can thank her that I directed it.

Well, I guess it’s not hard to be on the same page emotionally about the whole thing, sharing those fears and concerns.
Heh, you bet. Emily said this was the scariest role she’s ever done. She said, “Normally you have to pretend your entire performance in a movie. This one is my biggest fear as a mother.” Of course, that creatures coming out of the woods to kill your kids, but she said, “my biggest fear is that I’m not going to be there in their time of greatest time of need.” And that can be whenever: bullied by a kid at school, with a boyfriend. Whatever it is in their exact moment of need: Will I be there? And that’s what’s the scariest. And that’s exactly what this movie is.