Owning Your Faults: Kris Rey and Gillian Jacobs on I Used to Go Here | Interviews

Kate’s line, “It could be better,” resonates so deeply with the current movement to right past wrongs in the era of COVID-19. 

KR: I agree a hundred percent, especially right now with everything that is going on with the anti-racism movement. Of course, I couldn’t have predicted it and I wasn’t trying to make a statement on it, but this idea of owning your faults and your failures and accepting them is so hard to do. Making an effort to improve those faults is something that we are all learning to do right now, and I think it applies to so many things. In terms of my own journey and my own life, it is something that I am always trying to do. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had huge transitions in my life and trying to accept those and learn from them and move forward has been something that has really made me feel whole.

GJ: That line definitely speaks to me in a different way now. Back when we were shooting it, I connected with how Kate was being honest with herself, even if it’s just in a professional sense of, ‘Yeah, I wasn’t really that great in that thing. I could’ve tried harder, I could’ve dug deeper.’ But I don’t have a better answer than the one Kris just gave. 

I love how Kris cast herself as the new flame of Kate’s ex, and according to the character’s Instagram page, her name is Rey.

KR: I think that account is still on Instagram. I don’t imagine that anyone took it down, so I’m sure it’s still floating around, which is so funny. [laughs] That decision was really, truly just a symptom of making an independent film. You can’t afford to pay somebody for that sort of role, so who are you going to get? I ended up casting Declan, the husband of our first AD, Morgan Jon Fox, as Kate’s ex-boyfriend. He’s wildly attractive and a good friend of mine, so he agreed to do it for free. Since we’re so tight, we didn’t even need to get a crew. We just shot everything on an iPhone, and that is why my cameo wound up in there. I had not thought through how present I would be in the shot that zooms in on her Instagram page. [laughs] It gets a laugh from people who know me every time. 

Your film had its Chicago premiere last night at a drive-in. To what extent do these venues keep the communal moviegoing experience alive during a pandemic?

KR: The drive-in is cool! It has a huge air of nostalgia around it, so it doesn’t feel icky in the sense of this being our new future in a scary way. It simply feels like we’re going back to Americana, so it’s got a nice vibe to it while also providing a really safe way that we can collectively have an experience. I wish Gillian could’ve been there because it was so cool. Both screenings were sold out, and I could hear people laughing from inside their cars several rows away from me. 

It wasn’t the same as a festival premiere, but it did have a similar feeling to what you get when you are watching your work in a crowded theater and people are laughing. There is nothing like it, and honestly, that’s what it is all for, at the end of the day. It takes so long and such a huge effort to make a film. You really want people to see it and you want to get that feedback. It’s so nice how drive-ins are serving that purpose. I think they are rad, and I hope we keep them around.