Crater: Mckenna Grace Says Just Reading The Script Made Her Cry

There are many reasons to join a project for actors. Sometimes, it’s just enough that they want to work with another actor that has already signed on, or they want to work with the director. For others, they get the script and it really makes an impact on them. When Mckenna Grace got the script for Crater, as she explained during the worldwide press conference, it was the script that made her decide to sign onto this project, and it was also one of the rare scripts that moved her to tears just by reading it.

“Reading the script, I mean, of course, it’s really cool to be able to do something on the moon,” Grace explained. “But I think that all of the characters had such a unique bond. And I think that this film ends in a way that surprises me. And it felt like it had a lot of heart in the script. And I think that it’s quite hard to take a film that is a bunch of kids going on a road trip on the moon and make it feel grounded. And make some of the scenes and dialogue feel quite real. But I think that our director, Mr. Kyle, did a really good job of that. And I mean, reading the script, I don’t cry during movies or scripts very easily. But this one, I don’t know. The script just felt really special.”

Grace isn’t kidding when she says that Crater is sad, and while a couple of these characters are put through the wringer, Isaiah Russell-Baily’s Caleb might be going through the most. The movie opens with him losing his dad years after losing his mom, and the trip to the new planet will also have him losing his friends. When asked what challenges he faced playing Caleb, Russell-Baily talked about getting into the headspace of someone who has experienced that kind of loss because he [thankfully] hasn’t gone through that.

“I feel like one of the bigger challenges in playing Caleb was putting myself in the mindset of someone who has lost a parent or a very close family member,” Russell-Baily said. “Fortunately, I haven’t had to deal with a major loss like that. So, I had to do a lot of work to prepare for that aspect of my character. You know, I got advice from family members and friends who have experienced that pain and grief because I know there are a lot of levels and layers to grieving someone so close to you.”

That is a highly mature way of approaching very dark material, so props to Russell-Baily for not relying on the script for direction when it comes to something like that. The loss of a parent and the impending loss of your entire support system is hard to convey, and the fact that he went out of his way to talk to those with some experience shows how committed he was to Crater.

Crater: Cast List, Release Date, Summary

Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, the coming-of-age sci-fi adventure stars Isaiah Russell-Bailey, Mckenna Grace, Billy Barratt, Orson Hong, Thomas Boyce, and Scott Mescudi. A 21 Laps Production, the film was written by John Griffin and produced by Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, and Dan Cohen. The film’s executive producers are Emily Morris, John G. Scotti, Rpin Suwannath, Gordon Gray, Paris Latsis, and Terry Dougas—the Disney+ Original Movie Crater, which debuts exclusively on the service on May 12.