Brittany Snow on Making Parachute & Her ‘Sexy’ New Drama The Hunting Wives

Brittany Snow is surfing a newfound wave of success. Red, White, and Blue, a short film directed by Nazrin Choudhury in which Snow starred, nabbed a recent Oscar nomination. And with buzz building around her upcoming roles in the sexy-hot new series The Hunting Wives and the gripping drama, Barron’s Cove, the Pitch Perfect star is once again in the spotlight.

Enter: Parachute. The deeply moving romantic drama, directed and co-written by Brittany Snow, tracks two wayward souls braving major life transitions. Snow’s directorial feature debut has already been met with praise from audiences and critics, garnering the Thunderbird Rising Special Award at SXSW. The film stars Courtney Eaton (Yellowjackets) and Thomas Mann (Lessons in Chemistry, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty) as Riley and Ethan, who are both at a crossroads in their lives, braving their own personal demons. It also offers great turns in smaller roles by the likes of Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy), Joel McHale (Animal Control, It’s a Wonderful Knife), Gina Rodriguez (Jane the Virgin), and Lukas Gage (Roadhouse, Euphoria).

From the get-go, we had to ask Snow, who rose to fame thanks to starring roles in the show American Dreams and the hit films Pitch Perfect and Hairspray, how she handled any first-time directing jitters about overseeing such a grand undertaking. “I remember the night before [filming], just thinking, ‘Well, someone’s going to take it away. The rug is gonna be pulled out from under me. I’m not actually going to do this. No one’s really gonna allow me to do this, right?’” she shared. “And it sort of felt like impostor syndrome all through prep.”

Brittany Snow shared more with MovieWeb in a compelling interview that touches upon her role as the filmmaker, her own eating disorder/body image struggles, news about The Hunting Wives (which debuts on Starz later this year), how she gets along with the cast of Pitch Perfect (revealed in the video above), what lurks behind the real Dave Bautista, and much more. Read on.

Why Parachute Touches on Eating Disorders

One of the main threads in Snow’s film, which also stars Scott Mescudi (formerly known as Kid Cudi), Francesca Reale, and Kathryn Gallagher, illuminates how people use “parachutes” to cope — they come in the form of people, food, TV, social media, podcasts, shopping, sex, drugs, liquor, and more. Here, Riley is released from rehab after struggling with her addictions to food and body image. Meanwhile, Ethan battles co-dependency. Together, they form a ticking emotional time bomb.

When asked why it was important for her to shine light on eating disorders, body image issues, and addiction through her main characters, Snow said:

“
I always wanted to create a movie that would have helped me or made me feel less alone when I was going through it
. I’ve been very vocal and honest about how this is very much tied to my own life and something that I went through when I was in my early 20s. I remember searching for movies that dealt with this topic, not only with body dysmorphia or eating disorders or even just mental health in general, but the act of trying to love someone else when you’re not sure how to love yourself.”

A Hot Topic Not Often Addressed

Snow was also candid about how she felt these issues are not often addressed in film. Not necessarily the “ism” or the disease or the addiction, but, as she puts it, “trying to live, to go to the grocery store and do your job, and actually live through something that’s a struggle,” she explained, no doubt referring to scenes in the film where Riley is often triggered by a seemingly simple trip to the market or performing well at her job.

Related: The Best Movies and TV Shows That Put a Spotlight on Mental Health

“I wanted to make a movie about those ideas and topics, and hopefully make myself in my younger years feel more connected and less alone,” Snow added. When asked what helped her move through some of her greatest emotional hurdles during her own struggles with body image and an eating disorder, Snow said:

“Whether it was a good or a bad thing, the codependency that I had in my life to my best friend, who is a real person — the character Ethan [in the movie] — that was a real person for me,
and that person was really just the family that I never really had
. They saw me and had such an unconditional altruistic love for me. I was able to heal through them really showing up for me.”

“I wanted to pay tribute to all of those people who do that for other people when they go through a mental health struggle,” added Snow. “I feel like that’s a huge part of recovery and addiction, and what doesn’t get showcased and highlighted enough is the people that stand by them and see them through it.”

How Dave Bautista and Others Joined Parachute

When asked about the casting of Dave Bautista, Gina Rodriguez, Joel McHale, and others in smaller roles in Parachute, Snow said she is very “lucky” to be friends with “great people that are super talented,” adding:

I’ve been really lucky enough to work with some people throughout my career that I just sort of pick from project to project and we sort of lock into each other and realize we’re not going to let each other go.

“So, Gina, Dave, and Scott are some of my really close friends, and so I came to them,” continued Snow. “I wrote Bryce for Dave, I wrote Justin for Scott, and the same thing with the therapist [role]. I was really grateful they knew how important this subject matter was to me and how little time and money there was going to be. But they wanted to do it anyway.”

Dave Bautista may appear to be very intimidating physically, but is there a big teddy bear inside? “Oh, that’s why I wrote this for him,” Snow mused. “He’s so much more of this character than any of the other characters he plays. He’s the most genuine, open-hearted, dear human, and I think that it’s quite unfortunate that he is only pigeonholed in these sorts of big roles because of his stature and size, because he can do so much. I was excited that he wanted to do this for me.”

Brittany Snow Stars in the ‘Salacious and Sexy’ Hunting Wives

As Parachute plays out, Riley and Ethan move through their challenges together, sometimes in the messiest of ways. Parachute is bold, brave, and powerful. It’s one of those rare indie films that works its way into your heart.

Meanwhile, Snow has been busy elsewhere. There’s great buzz building about her upcoming series, The Hunting Wives, which is based on the popular novel by May Cobb. Hightown creator Rebecca Cutter serves as showrunner in an eight-part outing that finds Sophie O’Neil (Snow) moving to East Texas and succumbing to the charms of a prominent socialite named Margo (Malin Akerman of Dollface). Suddenly, Sophie is consumed by obsession and seduction. It wouldn’t be fun without murder, too, folks.

“I’m in North Carolina right now [filming],” Snow revealed of the series, which also stars Chrissy Metz (This is Us) and Dermot Mulroney (Anyone But You). “I think that people are going to be really surprised at how silky and salacious and sexy this show is. It’s definitely unlike anything I’ve done before, and it’s stretching me in a way that it’s really cool because my character has the biggest arc in terms of who we think she is and who she turns out to be. Yeah, there’s a lot of scenes in this show. It has such a great cast.”

Casting Yellowjackets’ Courtney Eaton

As mentioned, Snow cast Courtney Eaton in Parachute, and she gives a phenomenal performance. When asked if she had seen Eaton in the hit Showtime series Yellowjackets (where she plays teen Lottie), Snow beamed:

“Oh, I was a huge fan of
Yellowjackets
. And from the onset of watching the show, I knew that [Courtney]… does so much with so little. There’s so much that’s intriguing about her because she is so mysterious in a lot of ways, and not only gorgeous, but she sort of has this air about her that I find really fascinating.”

“She’s like that in real life too,” Snow added. “When I met her… how self-deprecating she is and how unaware of how beautiful she is, it was sort of this dichotomy that I found really interesting. So, I just became sort of partners in crime with her, and I just owe her and Thomas all of my gratitude. I mean, a lot of directing, most of directing, is just picking a great cast.” Catch Parachute in select theaters April 5, and wider release and On Demand April 12. Find more information here.