Interview: IF Star Cailey Fleming on Working With ‘Amazing’ John Krasinski

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to IF star Cailey Fleming about working with John Krasinski on the family movie, which boasts an incredible live-action and voice cast. Fleming discussed the big dance number, the surreal nature of appearing on billboards, and more. IF is now available to own digitally and will be released on 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD on August 13.

“Starring Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, and John Krasinski, IF is a heartwarming and hilarious tale about a girl who discovers that she can see everyone’s imaginary friends, known as IFs. She embarks on a magical journey to reconnect forgotten IFs with their kids, before they disappear,” reads the synopsis. “An adventure you’ll need to believe to see, IF is perfect for the whole family. Written and directed by John Krasinski, the film also features a stellar voice cast, including Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Steve Carell.”

Tyler Treese: IF has gotten this real organic word of mouth. A lot of people are coming out of the theaters really impacted by it, and they want their friends and family to see it. So there’s been a lot of nice support around the film. How’s it kind of been seeing people really get behind the film and find success week after week?

Cailey Fleming: Thank you. That means a lot. It’s everything to me. I’ve been such a big fan of this movie ever since I found out what it was about. I think the message is so special and so important in today’s world just because our world is very dark, and we could use a little light every now and then. So I think that’s kind of what IF is, or I hope that’s what IF is for people.

But it’s really sweet and special to see everyone’s stories about going to see it or how different people connected with it. People remembering their IFs from when they were little or remembering something that happened to them when they were little because we represented it with our movie. Seeing people’s drawings of the movie and seeing kids with their little stuff, the animals, is so sweet. Yeah, it just means everything. Every time I see something, it makes my day.

I like that you mentioned the fan drawings because there are just so many fun designs, and there’s a lot of merch. There are a lot of billboards. How’s it been seeing yourself on some of this stuff? That has to be a bit surreal.

It is. It’s really crazy. This is my first time seeing myself on a billboard or something. So it’s really cool. We were in New York doing something else recently, and we were with one of my friends, and she was like, “Look, look!” She started screaming, and I was like, “What? What’s wrong?” And it was an if bus literally in the middle of Times Square, and my face was on it, and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” But it’s been so cool.

People are sending me pictures from all around the world of billboards. There are buses in London. I got to see the real red buses in London with my face on it. There was a billboard in New York, Times Square. It’s just very crazy and I feel very lucky, but I don’t feel like it’s real.

Yeah, it’s incredible. These are once-in-a-lifetime moments. That’s really awesome that you got to see it in person. That’s so cool.

Your character, Bea, how much of yourself do you see in her? Are there a lot of similarities, or how different are you?

That’s a good question. Well, I can say throughout doing press for the movie, it’s been really great to talk about it just because I feel like it’s helping, helping me process it a lot more. But people have asked me how I got into character, um, and I’ve been asked that question a lot. And then, after answering it so many times, I kind of realized I never really got into character, and I was just kind of myself through the movie. So I don’t think I was ever acting. It was just kind of me. But I don’t think I realized that I did that until I started talking about it. So I guess you could say me and B are very similar because I didn’t, I just kind of was me. So I just kind of acted like I would if, if that was a, a real-life scenario, I guess. So I guess you could say we’re very similar.

Despite being the kid in the film, Bea is the most mature one out of the group that’s running around. She’s in charge. It’s a very fun dynamic. What did you like most about really spearheading this effort to find these IFs a home and that aspect of the film?

I really liked it. She had a lot of great characteristics. I like to say she’s very determined and she knows what she wants and she got it. So, I mean, claps for her. She did what she needed to do, but she has a lot of great qualities. I really like how she set her mind on something and she just did whatever it took to get it.

You worked with John Krasinski in two fashions since he was the director and an actor. I’ll ask you about him as an actor first because he is playing your very goofy dad in this film. There’s a moment early on where he is in the hospital and he is doing this dance. It’s very charming. How was it finding that father-daughter dynamic with John?

First of all, we shot the movie in order, which was really cool. I had never done something like that before. But John wanted to save all of our stuff until the end of shooting. So we kind of did everything in order. Then me and John did all of our stuff within like a week or something. So he really wanted to wait until the end of shooting so that we could get to know each other. He wanted it to be very, very real, I think. I’m really glad that we did that because I think it worked out perfectly. It was really fun just to play his daughter. Just to be on the same screen with him is really fun. I never worked with someone that was an actor and a director before, so I was really interested to see how that would work.

Yeah, that’s really smart that he saved it for last because, naturally, you would just form that bond. I think you can see that in the end result in the film here. What stood out about just him as a director behind the camera? Because he’s not all throughout the film. He has a more supporting role.

I say John is the best director ever just because he’s just so awesome. He’s so dedicated and I think that’s one of the things that makes him so great. Um, we had so much fun filming this movie. There were a lot of times that I would be really nervous for something and he would just make it fun for me so that I wouldn’t be so nervous. Like the dance I was really nervous about, and he was just so supportive. He’s very complimentary to everyone. He’s always giving out compliments to our cast and crew, thanking everyone, which is really special. There was this one scene where Ryan’s going down the hallway and like the wall falls down, he gets poison ivy. I don’t remember if it made it in the movie, but there was this fireball and he was like, “I am gonna get a shot of you and I need you to react to this and jump.”

There’s some things that I really struggle with for some reason, and that was one of them. I guess I was on the struggle bus that day, and I was like, “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He was like, “Oh, I’ll show you.” Then, obviously, executes it perfectly. I was like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. You’re gonna have to scare me or something.” So he was like, “Okay.” I don’t know how many directors would do this, but he found a way in every take to scare me differently. So one of the times, he literally popped out of a hidden door with a megaphone and screamed, “Fireball!” at me, and it really made me jump. So it’s just little things like that that make him so amazing. He’s just very dedicated, and he’s always down to have fun.

That sounds like such a special filming experience and it seems fitting that in this movie about imaginary friends and imagination that you did have to rely on your own imagination some while filming since there’s so many animated characters. You talked about some of the difficulties for that specific scene, but how was that experience overall dealing with a lot of stuff that was done in post?

Well, I was really nervous about how we were gonna act with the IFs before we started shooting, just because I didn’t know what to expect. You see all these behind-the-scenes clips of things, and it’s just a blue or a green screen with tape everywhere. So I didn’t know what was gonna happen, but John wanted to do everything practically. So we had actors for our three main IFs. We had puppets, cardboard cutouts, stuffed animals. So it was really nice because we, we did have to use our imagination, but not as much as we would if he did everything a different way. So it was really nice, but we always knew what our IFs looked like, so we never had to guess.

The dance sequence is such a highlight. Tina Turner is playing. How was it filming that big sequence and just learning all the choreography? It’s a really spectacular sequence.

Thank you. That’s one of my favorite scenes of the movie. I think it’s so special and fun. I was just so excited to shoot that I was really nervous, but I was more excited. I’ve always wanted to dance in a movie because I’ve been dancing since I was one, and it’s always been my biggest passion. So John really just made my dreams come true. He made all of ’em come true with IF. I wasn’t supposed to dance, but then he found out that I could dance and then he put me in it, which was really nice. It was really cool. I’m really proud of how it turned out.

I won’t get into spoilers, but there’s a big twist near the end and I had so much fun kind of seeing the kids react to it. There were a lot of shocked faces. What was your reaction when you first learned about the true nature of some of these characters?

I was shocked. I really had no idea, honestly. Like the first time I read it, I had no clue. So, it shocked me just as much as it will hopefully shock other people. But that scene did turn out to be one of my favorites. I think it’s really, really sweet.

Thanks to Cailey Fleming for taking the time to speak about IF.

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