“Flora and Son” Director on Why Eve Hewson Didn’t Try Outsing Her Father Bono in Musical Drama (Exclusive)

“Once” writer-director John Carney talks movies, music and why gratitude is “the single most important factor of daily life”

John Carney isn’t the son in Flora and Son — at least not directly.

As the Irish writer-director tells PEOPLE ahead of the film’s Apple TV+ streaming premiere Sept. 29, it’s the story of a fictional single mom in Dublin gifting a guitar to her wayward son only to discover her own musicianship. And although his own late mother gave the teenage Carney the guitar that set him on the path toward music and filmmaking, this follow-up to 2007’s Oscar-winning Once and 2016’s Sing Street isn’t a true-to-life homage to her.

“You can’t help but put who you are in your work,” says Carney, 51, opening up about the ways Flora’s struggle with her son does and doesn’t resemble his past. He also weighs in on the inherited musical chops of Bad Sisters star Eve Hewson, whose turn as Flora took the 2023 Sundance Film Festival by storm this January. Flora and Son costars Jack Reynor as father to their son Max, played by Orén Kinlan, as well as Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Flora’s guitar teacher.

PEOPLE: Eve Hewson is first and foremost an actor and not as involved in music as her father Bono. Considering Flora and Son pulled her more into that musical side, what was working with her like? 

For this role, we don't think Flora is really a musician or a singer. We didn't see her in that way. We saw her as somebody who's more like a rapper or somebody who realizes, “I have a little ability or aptitude for writing something down that is funny or surprising.” But she's not going to end up being some amazing lyricist or singer, it's not about that. So she was never worried, and nor was I, about her level of singing or the relationship to her dad being a famous rockstar. That actually never really came into it. It was always about the acting, which is her job.

And in a way, the singing, we didn't really talk about it initially. I didn't ever say, "By the way, can you crush the singing?" Because we both kind of knew Flora can probably hold a tune and she can probably play four or five chords reasonably well, and Eve was like, "I can do that." That's all I needed to know.

Related: Bono's Daughter Eve Hewson Once 'Stole' His Address Book to Prank Call Justin Timberlake: 'He Was Charmed'

You’ve said the seeds of inspiration for this film came from thinking about your mother when you were around Max’s age. How much does Flora and Son resemble or differ from your real-life memories? 

Well, I didn't try to have it too detailed. I wanted to sort of conceal that because it just becomes a memoir then, and you become too preoccupied with how it was and you'll never get it right. So I like to now find stories that trigger and suggest things for me, but that I can feel personally connected with — but that I can also lose my personal connection with, if that doesn't sound too paradoxical. And this was perfect.

My mother is nothing like Flora was. She was from a totally different background, she was from Roscommon in the countryside, she'd come to Dublin. She was a very different type of mother, but she did buy me that guitar and she did listen to me when I asked her for something. She also ignored a lot of what I asked her for, rightly so! Because you can't get everything for your kids when they're screaming at you.

But she got the right thing for me at the right time and she kind of invested in it in a way that was very significant and meaningful to me. And it's really more that side of the story and being grateful for and trying to write back to her and thank her, is what I wanted to achieve in the movie. And I think I did that quite well. It does seem like the kid at the end understands and sees his mother and is grateful to her despite all the shit that she's caused him. So in that sense, I feel liberated from the movie in a good way now.

Is that how inspiration for your movies often originates, a personal connection but avoiding documentarian recreation?

That's the nature of art, to not do that. The nature of art is to cover your tracks and conceal the artifice of what you're doing! Hide the tools.

Writing back to and thanking your mother is a beautiful idea. How personally cathartic was this filmmaking process? 

I'm not sure if there was any direct catharsis, it was more like a completing of a circle. You don't tell your mother, "Thanks a million," when you're 14; you thank her like a testosterone-driven little a--hole, and you just go off to your bedroom and play. And I have a kid now, he's seven. And sometimes you can see how little they understand how much you've done for them. And it's not that they're not grateful, it's that they're just at a different phase of life.

I just thought, "If I feel this way because I made this time to see my boy play this game or build this thing with him, I wonder what my mother felt like when she bought me a guitar.” I never had the maturity at that time to actually sit down and say, "I'm so grateful that you did that. Dad didn't do it, somebody else didn't do it. You paid the money for that." And so in that way it was cathartic, or more that it's just a nice completing — a dovetail of the story of her buying me that guitar that ends with a musical film about a mother and son.

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How else has having children informed your art or specifically this project?

In tons of ways, actually. And I can't specify them, but I'm definitely on set now thinking, particularly in a film like this, obviously, which pertains to parenting and all of that, my relationship with my kids are with me every day. Just thinking about the complexity of that relationship and the fact that I'm so privileged.

We were talking about this the other day, myself and my wife, like, "Out of all the people globally, we, me and you, are the luckiest"... And it's still hard sometimes and it's still challenging. We're the most privileged humans on the planet, and it's still confounding and baffling and surprising and challenging and wearing.

Flora, who lives in a shoebox, doesn't have a lot of money, was a kid when she had a kid, doesn't have a lot of resources — let's have a look at seeing how we can take a damaged relationship and suggest a course to repair. That's all [this movie] really was. These were the things I was thinking of in terms of my own family dynamic and how lucky I am, and in a way, how unlucky Flora is and how gifted she is and courageous she is to try and find a way forward with her son.

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Lastly, how much is gratitude a guiding value, in your art and life? 

It's hugely important because it's the biggest fact. These things sound like they're just kind of self-help cliches, but gratitude is the single most important factor of daily life. And actually, if so many of the people that were being dicks at the moment thought about how grateful they should be — even though things occasionally do need fixing and things aren't perfect, they're damn close.

Flora and Son is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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