Pop-Culturalist.com

Director Steve Pink and actors Taylor Grey, Bethany Anne Lind, and Nelson Lee are the masterminds behind the must-see new film, The Wheel.

The critically-acclaimed film follows Albee and Walker, a young couple on the brink of divorce, who embark on a mountain getaway to save their fledgling marriage. Before long, their personal drama also creates tension between their newly engaged Airbnb hosts.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to chat with Steve, Taylor, Bethany, and Nelson about The Wheel, what it was like filming during a pandemic, and how the cast and crew built bonded and built trust with each other.

PC: Steve, I wanted to start with you. How did you first come across this script? What was it that you connected with that made you want to direct this project?
Steve: These young producers, Josh Jason and Molly Gilula, gave me the script. Josh and I worked in a commercial company together. He gave me the script. Of course, I asked him if he had seen any of my credits. He said he had. He was still interested in me directing the movie. [laughs] I fell in love with it. The opportunity to work on a drama and tell a story around the emotional lives of these characters and their crisis was a great challenge. It was much harder than I thought it would be. I was thrilled to do it.

PC: Taylor, it’s established really early on that Walker and Albee have this really extensive relationship and history, and because of the pandemic you and Amber actually did not have the traditional rehearsal process that you normally would have. How were you able to build that bond through Zoom and through technology?
Taylor: That’s a great question because that was very difficult for such a character-driven piece and with characters who have this much history. We were all going a little crazy during the pandemic. I had a lot of time on my hands. I took it upon myself to write a list of questions for Amber [Midthunder]. It was almost like a speed dating profile. I gave her my responses as well. She might have thought I was crazy at first. We hopped on a call with Steve, Trent [Atkinson] (the writer), Amber, and I. We spoke about how we were all coming to this and how we saw our characters. Two hours later, I fired off an email to her asking her about how many pets she’s had, what her favorite color was, and things like that. It was my attempt at trying to have a rehearsal process because you find those things out during that process. Then you have them in your back pocket to pull out if you need them for a scene. But without that, it’s very difficult, especially when you’re playing two characters that are constantly prodding each other. But she responded, and I wrote it all down. [laughs] I went up to the woods where we filmed with all this information. It worked out, but it was definitely one of the stranger emails I’ve ever sent anybody.

Steve: Our first rehearsal was surreal because we were outside at a lodge at a summer camp in the woods. We were social distancing because it was the early days of the pandemic. We had masks on. We were sitting in chairs about twenty to twenty-five feet away from each other in a giant circle. We were reading through the scenes and I started to sweat profusely because I was like, “I don’t think there’s any emotional connection between any of these people. I’m not sure how we’re going to create that.” Then it took me probably like forty-five minutes before I realized, “You’re sitting in a chair twenty-five feet away from each other and no one can see each other.” [laughs] It was such an odd thing to consider at that moment. Then after an hour, I calmed down. I was like, “Oh yeah, but they won’t have their masks and they’ll actually be closer together and talking to each other.” It was interesting. Those early days were interesting in that way and terrifying as well. Everyone wasn’t hanging out with each other or having dinner together. We had to find it in the moment pretty much every day because there was no socializing. We couldn’t hang out after shooting. We were all at this summer camp. You would think that we could have drinks around the picnic tables, but that wasn’t happening. We had to find so much of it in the moment. It was the only time that the actors saw each other without their masks on.

PC: That chemistry definitely comes across the screen. Bethany and Nelson, in the midst of trying to help this young couple and their relationship, your two characters discover cracks in their own relationship. How did the two of you approach the dynamic between your two characters?
Bethany: I remember talking with Steve before we started filming. These two characters really do love each other. There was something there. We worked very hard to make sure that at the beginning you see that connection. You don’t automatically think, “Why is she with this guy? Why is he with her? They clearly don’t belong together.” There’s nothing given away at the beginning that would imply that they should never have been together, which I really loved. It makes it more complicated and nuanced as the story goes on.

Nelson: Yeah. That opening scene really establishes our relationship. It shows that they really have a relationship. It’s not fake. There’s a real intimacy and love there. We were all masked and then not masked, and we weren’t even allowed to kiss, so we had to awkwardly gaze into each other’s eyes, which still works.

Bethany: We could just breathe heavily on each other.

Nelson: Heavily breathe.

Steve: There was a great evolution that you both brought to your characters. We talked to the writer about it as we were doing everything. There was some tension in the beginning of the relationship in the original script. But in talking with Bethany and Nelson, we were like, “Why should we give that away? Obviously, Albee and Walker are in such a high crisis situation. Maybe we should show another portrait of them and not give anything away at all. Let the cracks slowly emerge as Albee and Walker invade their lives.” That was something we discussed in a conversation. It was a brilliant idea. That’s why their scenes in the beginning are like that.

PC: I love that contrast in the film. This is a question for the entire group. Trust is such a key element of any production but especially when you’re filming during a pandemic. Steve, how were you able to create that environment on set? For the actors, how did that trust allow you to play in this environment and deliver the performances that we see on screen?
Steve: I really trusted the actors and kept telling them that every day. I was like, “The thing that you guys are feeling when you’re in the scene, the way you see your characters relating with each other, let’s explore that right here in the moment. We don’t have rehearsals. Bring everything that you’re bringing to the scene. Let’s explore it every day.” They’re all brilliant actors, so I had enormous trust in them. Then it was just a question for me as the director of finding what was telling the story best in terms of the emotional lives of the characters and the larger narrative. It was seeing what they did as a group, as pairs, and exploring that and capturing it.

Taylor: We went into it very blind. I’ve never really done anything where we were literally in a camp. I was sharing walls with different castmates and the crew. There’s an intimacy that comes from that where you begin to trust. That really brought us closer throughout the entire thing. But we also had so much trust in Steve, and that really was what it was. You have to have that with your director. We had a little bit of a false start the very first night. We went to watch some dailies, which we didn’t do again, but I think seeing them after our first or second day, it was like, “Okay. I see how this is looking.” That informed the rest of what we were going to do because it looked beautiful. We had this amazing setting for the film. We surrendered to that. The writing was great. We did our character work. We went from there.

Nelson: The great thing about this quarantine camp was that it was really interesting. We all bonded. We never knew what anyone looked like until lunchtime when we were sitting far from each other and we all had our masks down. It was like, “Oh my God. That’s what you look like.” It’s cool. It was interesting as it went on because we were all together. It was like a play. We had so much time to speak about things and to swap ideas. It led to us really looking forward to the scenes because we got to act and we got to see each other. We got to speak normally. It was really fun. We could put our masks in our pockets and speak to each other. It was a privilege that we actors had. We even tried to do an ultimate frisbee day. Steve is exceptional at it.

Taylor: He’s incredible.

Nelson: We all had our masks on and almost died. [laughs]

Make sure to follow Steve (Instagram), Taylor (Twitter/Instagram), Bethany (Twitter/Instagram), and Nelson (Instagram). The Wheel is now available anywhere you stream movies!