Exclusive: Director John Patton Ford on Casting, Writing, and Social Commentary in Emily the Criminal

Riddled with student debt and unable to enter the job market due to her criminal record, Emily (Aubrey Plaza) turns to black-market capitalism through credit card scams. She’s introduced to this world by Youcef (Theo Rossi), whose business partner isn’t happy about their growing relationship. The pursuit of love, quick cash, and winning power back in a system that has locked them out ensues.

Rounding out the cast in Emily the Criminal are Bernardo Badillo, Jonathan Avigdori, Kim Yarbrough, Gina Gershon, and more. It’s written and directed by John Patton Ford and available in theaters on August 12, 2022.

“I’ve gone to grad school and got myself into a tremendous amount of debt, and when I got out of school, I had fear and anxiety and I had trouble finding a job. I knew that a lot of other people felt the same way throughout the country, and a lot of people are dealing with the same kind of thing. So, I wanted to make a movie that honored that feeling but was still fun. So, I made it a student debt thriller,” explained Ford.

Casting and Writing of Emily the Criminal

“We were so fortunate,” commented Ford on the casting of Plaza and Rossi. “I never envisioned anyone while writing it, so to have Aubrey come on board and suddenly embody what was just a faceless, imaginary character, that was immensely gratifying. Both of them, they’re really generous and work really hard. They’re selfless, and those are rare things, so I was grateful.”

Ford continued, discussing the evolutions that the script went through before the final product we see on screen. “If you steal my laptop and open up the file Emily the Criminal, you would find 37 drafts of the script, going back to 2016. It’s kind of par for the course. You have to rewrite these things a zillion times.”

Plaza had influenced some of the rewrites, said Ford, as she also served as a producer on the project, noting, “I remember she wanted to lean into the relationship between herself and the Youcef character as she felt that’s what the audience would really care about. I think her instincts were right about that. She wanted stronger relationships in the movie, and for those relationships to up the stakes.”

Related: Exclusive: Aubrey Plaza and Theo Rossi on Emily the Criminal

“The experience of being $70,000 in debt and not being able to find a job is a uniquely American experience,” said Ford, “I think we’re quick to forget that no other country has this experience at all, or anything even remotely akin to it. The fact that we accept it is just bananas and unacceptable. I think a lot of my frustration and anger went right into the script. I wanted audiences to find themselves in a character who was acting out of frustration and acting out of anxieties and for us to relate to that person, understand that person, and not judge them.”

We certainly do not judge the characters in the film, given the contextualization of them in a broken system. As their worlds are stacked against them, whether it be Emily whose only real job prospect is an unpaid internship or Youcef who is thrust into a world of crime by being born into it, we actually do the opposite and root for them.

“There’s this question in Hollywood that we get a lot, especially in screenwriting: can you make the character likable? Can you make them more likable? There’s even a book about screenwriting called Save the Cat that suggest you should have your central character do something really redeeming such as saving a cat within the first five minutes so audiences like the character. I always found this hilarious — it’s not like audiences just like likable people, you have to have a fully formed human being, and if people believe that character is a fully formed human being, you can make a movie about the worst person ever. If that person feels totally fleshed out and true, we’ll at least care enough to see what happens to them. And I think that’s the ticket, so I’m glad someone would root for them,” commented Ford.

Emily the Criminal comes to us from Vertical Entertainment.