John Cho, Mia Isaac and ‘Don’t Make Me Go’ Director Hannah Marks on the Film’s Exploration of Single Parenthood
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[This story contains spoilers for Don’t Make Me Go.]
In Don’t Make Me Go, a father, Max (John Cho), and his daughter Wally (Mia Isaac) take a cross-country road trip to attend his 20-year college reunion. At least that’s what Max tells his teen daughter.
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In reality, he has a terminal condition that gives him a year to live, if he passes on a surgery that could see him die on the table. With no one to leave Wally with and little time left to ensure she’s OK after he’s gone, Max turns to the reunion in hopes that it will put him back in touch with Wally’s mother, who left them both when she was young.
Directed by Hannah Marks and written by Vera Herbert, the movie is a portrait of a family trying to navigate each other amid the reality that what should have been a very long love story is being cut short. But part of what makes Don’t Make Me Go so emotionally compelling is that its core tension is examined specifically through the lens of single parenthood, which affects every choice that Max and Wally ultimately make on their journey, which doubles as a lifetime of experiences for them both.
Their relationship is charming, funny and real — an honest, empathetic and authentic look at what it means to raise your child (and your parent) alone.
Ahead of the movie’s Tribeca Film Festival premiere, stars John Cho and Mia Isaac, along with director Hannah Marks spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how they cast Don’t Make Me Go‘s endearing family, portraying the realities and nuances of single parenthood and how several elements of one of the film’s most emotional scenes weren’t originally in the script.
The film is a beautiful, universal examination of single-parent families, but there was one moment where this being an Asian family with a biracial child at its center became explicitly noticeable — when Wally and Max talk about putting her in African dance classes. Can you talk about the approach to casting and how it informed the family we see on screen?
MIA ISAAC Actually, that was something that my mother did. (Laughs.) It’s based off of that. I was talking to Hannah — I think we were in the Zoom read — and we talked a little bit about it. I told her about how my mom, when I was little, took me to these African dance classes to try to connect with the other half of myself. And Hannah was like, “We gotta put that in there.” (Laughs.)
HANNAH MARKS We just wanted to make it more specific wherever we could. In the screenplay, originally, the characters were Caucasian and that predated my involvement in the movie, but I was such a John Cho fan that it just felt like let’s change it. Then Mia auditioned.
John, the representation of Asian families on screen has been important to you. How did you think about this?
JOHN CHO It taps into so many things. In general, I’d say that a lot of Asian family dynamics are presented as like the culture drives them away from love. They have to leave their culture to find love, and I did respond to this partially because this is going to be an Asian family because of me, obviously, and it’s defined by love. That sadly is differentiated in the marketplace, and that was important to me. Then you rarely see Asian single parents, so that was unique, but mostly this is an incredibly human, universal story. I don’t know how you don’t find an access point in the story.
GEOFFREY SHORT/AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC
John and Mia, you have such a warm, believable chemistry on screen as this father-daughter duo. How did you cultivate that between you?
CHO I have to say that Mia brought in that relationship. She presented it to me in the audition. When we did our chemistry read — and I’ve said this before — but I think the scene involved an argument, and the way she formed it, it was very clear that even though they were on the surface fighting over something, underneath, it was clearly a relationship of love that they had gone through something together, which is the absence of his wife and her mom. They had both gone through the same trauma, and that had brought them closer. That was a relationship that she presented to me, and I really picked up on it and responded to it, and we just built on that.
ISAAC I think John said it perfectly. In terms of us on set, I guess our relationship kind of mimics Max and Wally’s relationship in that most of the shoot, it was just us, and it’s always been just Max and Wally. So that made it a lot easier. Because most of the days, it was just us and the car.
This film doesn’t shy away from the complicated, difficult realities of a parent choosing to leave their child. What did you want audiences to take away about Wally’s mom’s choices and what led to them?
MARKS That’s a very tough part of the movie. I also think it’s rare to see that onscreen where the mother is the one who leaves, so to me, I was excited by that aspect of the story feeling different. But it’s hard to understand that person, and I think, hopefully, there can be forgiveness with that character, even though it’s really hard. I think Wally forgives her, and that’s what matters.
CHO It’s a tough pickle. I just feel like it’s all dirty for everyone. That’s a very messy situation, and neither parent really acted in wholly honorable ways. But Max did stick around, so I gotta pat him on the back. I guess I have sympathy for everyone in the story. These are tough circumstances, and life is just messy that way.
MARKS We love a movie where no one’s the hero. No one’s the villain — everyone’s a shade of grey.
Mia, this is a big character development moment for Wally. How do you think this shapes her coming-of-age storyline?
ISAAC I feel like that’s a turning point in that this is part of Wally growing up, and part of growing up is realizing that your parents are human and that they make mistakes and that they are imperfect. But it’s interesting because I think Wally and Max’s relationship was always different in that they were more equal with each other, and it felt very open. Then this realization that he was still hiding things from her and that she was kind of lied to definitely changes the course of the movie.
We see Wally has her own journey with finding young love, but Max also gets his own love story. Why did it feel important to parallel their journeys this way?
MARKS Because I feel like it is a coming-of-age movie, but not just for Wally. For Max as well. That’s so important to treat them equally. They’re both the leads of this movie, even though it’s told a little bit more from Wally’s perspective. Also, it’s so fun to juxtapose what a relationship is like when you’re 16 versus when you’re in your 40s. And it’s important that he’s not alone in the end. I really wanted to portray that there could still be happiness in his life after tragedy.
Wally has to step up for her dad Max who is sick because there’s not another adult to share that responsibility. Why did you want to show that part of the single-parent experience within this narrative about a parent with illness?
MARKS It certainly makes the stakes higher. I think for me, and John I don’t want to speak for you, but I didn’t want Max to be a pity party. We didn’t want him to be a sad sack. So I think his intention when feeling sick was not about, oh, poor me. It was about I don’t want to hurt my daughter because of everything she has. That felt like a stronger perspective than saying, “Oh, I’m dying.” It was more about how does this affect Wally?
CHO Yeah, I also saw it as like when you’re the only parent in the house, the traditional roles get messy, and there’s a clear reversal. She sometimes acts like his parent and vice versa. When you talked earlier about the parallel romance, he’s almost exiting adolescence or an adolescence of sorts and going into the world. So the roles are just scrambled a little bit in a way that it doesn’t get when you have two adults. So I thought that messiness was very good for the story.
GEOFFREY SHORT/AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC
One of the fullest illustrations of the specific parent-child dynamic between Wally and Max comes towards the end of the movie in the scene where she rear-ends another car. Can you talk about how that scene came together and its significance?
MARKS A late addition to the script. (Laughs.) We filmed it at the very end of the shoot, which I think was helpful because they got to build so much of the relationship by then.
ISAAC I thought that scene was really great just because it’s so normalized and accepted for the child to be mean to the parent and to say hurtful things. But the parent always has to be loving and forgiving and patient and kind. I liked how in that scene, Max was just honest with Wally, and they were able to argue with each other and just lay everything out.
CHO That was an interesting scene. My memory of it is I didn’t know it was going to happen. I read it on the page and memorized it. I didn’t know how exactly it was going to play out, but the blocking really unlocked it. I didn’t see that long chase in the script. I didn’t know that there was going to be a lot of running, and it was the act of just chasing my girl to this field away from this car crash — it added this edge, this push and this velocity to the scene that I didn’t see on the page. So it really kind of changed the performance, and it became this vomit that I think works.
MARKS I do think the chase allowed the dialogue to feel so spontaneous because it’s like you have no choice but to just spit it out. You’re so out of breath it feels heightened.
You said earlier it was a late addition. Can you elaborate?
MARKS I was so mad at that car during the shoot that I wanted to destroy it. (Laughs.)
CHO Let’s say it was temperamental. (Laughs.)
MARKS Originally, it was that she almost crashed, and I was so annoyed at the car that I was like, “Let’s kill it.” Another thing I thought is just like, well, we have them on the road the whole movie. We got to crash the car. It just felt right. But it was not originally planned, and I was a little scared to pitch it to the producers. So I did it very casually. “What if we crashed it?” My voice got really high-pitched. But it all worked out. Everyone was OK with it. We had one shot at it. We had, I think, five cameras on it and just prayed.
This interview edited for length and clarity.
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