John Krasinski chats with The Hollywood Reporter at the 'IF' premiere and shares how his children helped him create and develop the movie. Plus, he dishes on how he wrote the character Blue based on his 'The Office' pal Steve Carell.
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00:00 Congratulations on this project. You said that you made this movie for your kids.
00:04 Did you get to bounce any ideas off of them while making this?
00:07 And what do you hope that they take away from watching this movie?
00:11 I bounced so many ideas off of them. I pitched them the idea, the script.
00:14 I pitched them, I showed them all the drawings that I did while I was writing the script.
00:17 I'm a terrible artist. So I had to walk them through that.
00:20 They told me what was cute about certain ifs, what wasn't cute, they wanted to change.
00:23 But then also their ifs are in the movie. Their imaginary friends are in the movie.
00:26 So Allie, the pink alligator, is one of my daughters.
00:29 And the other one is the flaming marshmallow.
00:30 Yeah, so it's a family affair. And my wife's the unicorn. So come on, we're all involved.
00:36 Well, you also had a little bit of an office reunion with Steve Carell.
00:40 How did you rope him into getting into this movie?
00:42 And how did you choose what character he was going to play?
00:47 And directing him as well, which is a first.
00:48 Well, the last time I wrote a part for someone was for her in Quiet Place.
00:52 And I was too nervous to tell her about it. And the same thing happened with Steve.
00:55 I was writing Blue to be Steve because of his sense of humor and how sweet he is,
00:59 and how incredibly vulnerable, and also how big, open-hearted he is.
01:03 And he gives great hugs. So I was like, if he doesn't do this, we're in trouble.
01:07 And as soon as he said yes, it was like a family member giving you that love
01:09 and support that I needed. And so as soon as he jumped on, I knew we were off to the races.
01:14 And very quickly, your beautiful wife, how did you pick what part she would play?
01:17 Or did she get to just sell herself?
01:19 I sort of had in mind that she would be an amazing unicorn,
01:23 because she's kind of a unicorn. Let's be honest.
01:24 And she thought, yes, I'm up for the task of playing a unicorn. So she did it.
01:27 I love that. Also, very quickly, if you had to have someone in Hollywood
01:31 voice your real-life If character, who would it be?
01:34 Man, that is tough. Maybe Gosling. Gosling can do-- he can do it all.
01:42 He can do it all. He can be Ken. He can be Fall Guy. And he can be my If. Yeah.
01:47 Well, he's the last one left that wasn't part of this film.
01:49 Right. I don't want him to feel left out. Yeah, that's the truth.
01:52 Well, thank you so much for stopping by. Congratulations again.
01:54 Thank you so much. Thank you.
01:55 Congratulations. Thank you very much.
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