Exclusive: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Cast Discusses the Charming Adaptation

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry has a lot going for it. It’s based on the bestselling novel by Gabrielle Zevin, who wrote the screenplay for this film directed by Hans Canosa; the two had worked together 17 years ago in the entirely split-screen masterpiece Conversations With Other Women. It’s also a unique film, a mature but light-hearted romantic dramedy that feels like the type of Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan films that just don’t get made anymore.

Perhaps the greatest part of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, however, is its incredible cast — Kunal Nayyar, Christina Hendricks, Lucy Hale, David Arquette, Scott Foley, and more. The film takes place over the span of roughly 15 years, and this galactic ensemble of stars brings the intimate small-town of Zevin’s novel to life in an appropriately epic way.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is About Everything

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry often feels like one of those grand cinematic adaptations of a John Irving novel, such as The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire. Sure, its focus is on the titular Fikry, but it weaves through multiple characters and many years, successfully condensing the novel into a picturesque chronicle of the human condition; it somehow seems small but also about everything at the same time. The film begins with Fikry, heartbroken and depressed after the death of his wife, on the night that his most prized collection (a rare Edgar Allan Poe book, Tamerlane and Other Poems) is stolen.

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From there, the film’s thread is sewn through various characters, like Fikry’s sister-in-law (Hendricks) and brother-in-law, the town’s sheriff (Arquette, perfecting onscreen policing yet again), and a book distributor Fikry slowly takes a shine to (Hale). Tracking the myriad components of everyday life (coming-of-age, love, tragedy, growing up, parenting, politics, mental health issues, friendships, death), The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry truly fleshes out the novel’s often idyllic setting and wide ensemble cast of mostly delightful characters.

Christina Hendricks on The Storied Life

Hendricks recognizes the John Irving connection. “I felt those same things when I read the script. It has a sense of the kind of films that I liked when I was growing up, that the family would all talk about, this very sort of rich epic following people throughout their lives, watching them grow,” said Hendricks, who plays Fikry’s sister-in-law and just might experience the widest character arc in The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. The town is not without complicated characters though, and the film practically zooms in from the macroscopic America to the small town and the microscopy of their lives. Eventually, for various narrative reasons, Fikry’s bookstore becomes the town’s connective tissue.

“There’s this real character of the town in which they are, too,” continued Hendricks. “You feel sort of nestled into this little community in this space. It just feels like this place you want to disappear to for a little bit. You want to go beyond this island in this little cozy bookstore. And I think, in a time when bookstores are fading fast, I think this is about how it can be a pillar in your community. It’s much more than just about going in and paying $30 for a book, it’s about what that bookstore or that place in your town does for the people around you.”

David Arquette and Hendricks on the Movie Adaptation

Hendricks is right that The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry celebrates bookstores; the film might be one of the most loving tributes to literature and the power of books in decades. Zevin, the original author, was able to transfer that passion to the cinematic medium (despite how paradoxical that may seem) in her movie adaptation of the book. “I love the fact that Gabrielle wrote the book and the screenplay, it was really a gift,” said Arquette, who is arguably the most endearing, smile-inducing character in a town full of them. “Hans [Canosa, the director] really brought it all together in a wonderful way.”

There was quite a lot to bring together, considering the lengthy amounts of time and exposition the film covers, but it takes this on in order to truly burrow into the characters’ lives and growth. “So much of showing the passage of time was about where the people were in their relationships,” said Hendricks, whose character, like anybody, really does ebb and flow with the people around her; The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry really emphasizes the importance of community, relationships, and decent people in this way.

“You could feel the energy or spirit change within the people that they are friends with or in relationships with. [For example] at the beginning of the film, my character’s in a scary and unhappy marriage with Scott Foley’s character, and by the end […] you can see that this agitation and ends with a sort of calmness that she’s just piling on to.”

Kunal Nayyar and Lucy Hale on Zevin’s Script

“What attracted me to the film was obviously the script and the story. I love the script,” said Nayyar, who is wonderful as Fikry. Most famously known as Raj in The Big Bang Theory, the beloved actor goes deep with Fikry, moving from the dark place where the film begins into places of hope, struggle, and love. “When I read the script, it made me cry, which is pretty rare.”

Related: Exclusive: Kunal Nayyar Confides in Lucy Hale in The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry Clip

“Right now with film, not all of us get opportunities and the time to explore such complex and diverse characters, and to get an opportunity to do that was really a dream for me,” continued Nayyar. “It’s just so rare that I read something and feel something,” added Hale. “There are so many different types of movies out there, but there’s not many like this anymore. And I think that especially now, this movie just represents hope and life after loss and second chances and unexpected relationships, and I was just deeply moved by the script.”

Hale and Nayyar Have an Epic Romance in The Storied Life

Hale’s breathless litany of what The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry represents is a pretty great summation of how the film compiles so much of the human experience (and a passion for literature) into its feature-length runtime. The whole cast does a great job of depicting these characters over a lengthy period of time, touching on the small but important moments of their lives to create a full portrait of each person. “The chance to get to play a character over the course of 15 years and see how they change was great,” said Hale.

“Something that I realized,” said Nayyar, “is that the first tendency when you play a character over 15 years is that you go big and start, like, walking differently. But if you really think about it, I have friends who are 50 years old, and they’re pretty much the same as they were when they were 40, outside a few things here and there. So for me, personally, I went in the other direction. I just tried to make it as simple as possible, because I don’t think that people physically change that much in that short period of time, in my opinion.”

“There’s so much that happened in the book, and compressing it into however long the movie is, was more of a bigger challenge,” added Hale. “There’s just so much that happens and I wish we could make many movies with A.J. Fikry. We might, actually, but I feel like we really got all the bullet points and hopefully captured what made the book so great as well.” She continued:

We didn’t have a lot of time to make the movie, but hopefully it leaves people feeling a little more hopeful, and hopefully you want to go pick up a book. Bookstores and books in general are kind of a dying breed, and so I think that there’s something really nostalgic about the film as well.

For lovers of books or just those in love with love, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is a down-to-earth, sweeping story about all the parts of life — the tragedies, the romances, the hope, and all that minutiae in between. From BCDF Pictures and Empathy Machines, in association with Three Point Capital, Vertical Entertainment present The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry.