“Waves” stars Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Alexa Demie faced a few challenges while playing their lead roles of Trey Edward Shults’ drama, but the duo spent a lot of time together to balance it out.
“There were quite a few challenges in playing my part,” Demie told TheWrap’s Steve Pond at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It was a lot of high, chaotic emotion and just bringing that out takes a lot out of you, but the good thing was, Kelvin and I spent a lot of time together and when we weren’t filming those hectic scenes, [we’d] try to have fun and go to the beach and enjoy ourselves. With every great thing comes challenges, and I think we all had our challenges but it was worth it.”
Harrison, Jr. said he had to learn how to “play sports,” but the emotional understanding of what his character was going through was another challenge.
“Understanding the relationships that are there and trying to find the humanity and the innocence and the boy in it all,” he explained. “He’s dealing with a lot of pressures and he’s trying to navigate it all and it’s a lot when you’re 17, 18.”
Shults wrote and directed the film, which follows two young couples through the emotional time of growing up, falling in love, and dealing with grief. Taylor Russell, Sterling K. Brown and Lucas Hedges also star.
“It’s been brewing forever,” Shults said when asked where he found his inspiration for the story. “[There were] iterations and different versions of this story for like a decade or something, and I don’t quite know what it is. It just feels like it took time and I lived life and I put everything of my experience into this so far.”
A24 will release “Waves” on November 1 in theaters.
Watch the video above.