(Warning! Light spoilers in the video interview above, but no spoilers in the article below!)
To be clear, Netflix's The Half of It is not your typical teenage romantic comedy by any means.
The story follows Ellie Chu (Leah Lewis), a reclusive high school student who makes enough money to support her grieving father by writing other students' essays. A classmate named Paul (Daniel Diemer) approaches her with a proposition to help him write love letters to a popular girl named Aster (Alexxis Lemire). The two girls form a connection through the letters and the mingling feelings result in an unlikely and explosive love triangle.
PRIDE had a chat with the cast alongside queer director/writer Alice Wu about the film, and both Wu and Lewis spoke on the power of the lead character being queer and Asian American as well as the importance of representation.
"To be able to play an Asian-American LGBTQ character, it really felt like we were hitting two enormous birds with one tiny stone," says Lewis. "These stories are not told. There are real people out there that are struggling with the feelings."
She continues:
"It was a huge privilege to be able to depict something like that because growing up, I didn't have many films that I could really look at, speaking specifically for Asian American characters, I didn't have that. The fact that we are putting out a movie like that, it's really beautiful to watch and it feels like even my own story is being told a little bit."
It's a moving and powerful slow-burn of a film that makes you fall head over heels for all of the characters. And while we don't want to spoil anything, the movie concludes with its own kind of happy ending; in Lewis and Lemire's opinions, a better one than your usual rom-com.
Watch our interview with the cast and crew above if you're okay with light spoilers! The Half of It is streaming on Netflix now!
