SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for “Love of Your Life,” now streaming on Prime Video.
“I obviously was drawn to the script, but didn’t immediately think, ‘This is my next project,’” Morrison tells Variety over Zoom. “It really was just, this is good writing and I want to talk about it with this writer.”
Morrison and Cox really connected. “There was a deep sense of mutual respect, but also, for this script that was incredibly well received and jumped off the page, she was not precious about it,” Morrison says. “The more I sat with it, the more it sort of got under my skin.”
Below, the director speaks more with Variety about working with Qualley, putting the COVID-19 pandemic on screen and why they didn’t go with the obvious ending.
What was it about the script that struck you?
Tell me about finding your leading lady in Margaret Qualley.
How about the men in Maya’s life: Gabriel Basso, Aaron Pierre and Patrick Schwarzenegger?
How has your career as a cinematographer informed your directing style?
Margaret Qualley and Gabriel Basso in “Love of Your Life.”
©MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection
The COVID-19 pandemic is a central part of the story. How did you go about portraying that and addressing our collective trauma from it, given that it wasn’t that long ago? Not many films have attempted to put it on screen.
I think for us, the most important thing was to get it right. Because this isn’t just the pandemic, it’s the pandemic as experienced through a first responder. And so we did a lot of consulting, both myself and Margaret, with nurses and doctors and just the medical profession during that time and the different stages of it. And then the lasting effects of it, of course. But I think just looking for little things that we would all relate to, even like “Tiger King,” wiping down the groceries with Clorox. The goal was really to recreate it in a way that feels both like yesterday and also like a lifetime ago, but that everyone would fully relate to. And not make it sensationalized. I think that’s the thing about the whole movie — I’m always trying to make it the grounded, relatable version of itself and not the cinema version of itself. So it’s never the extreme, it’s always the recognizable.
Margaret has some very heavy emotional scenes. How did you work together to get her to that place?
At the end of the film when Maya flees the airport, I expected her to run back to Jason, but she actually goes to visit Ruth. Tell me about the decision for her not to end up with him.
You just touched on the other thing that drew me to this script, which is that we’re taking these genres that have a set of expectations and completely subverting them. It was very much by design that the audience thinks she’s going back to Jason for a moment, and then realizes she’s going to Ruth. And that’s because this genre is set up for the happily ever after romantic ending. And I am just so profoundly grateful and thrilled that that’s not how this film ends and that it really is so much more about finding her way back to life and to herself. The hope is now she will be open to all the possibilities in front of her — and will probably find the right person again someday and maybe still have kids and all the things — but we’re not spelling it out or buttoning it up for people and know that just finding herself is enough.
Aaron Pierre and Margaret Qualley in “Love of Your Life.”
©MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection
“Love of Your Life” got a one-week theatrical release before dropping on Prime. Why was this important for you?
Any idea what your next film will be?
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
