VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Lake Bell & Sarah Cooper On Relating To Their ‘Summering’ Characters

Summering depicts the story of four girls the summer before they enter middle school as they face what it means to grow up.

Lake Bell and Sarah Cooper recently sat down with uInterview founder Erik Meers for a conversation about what makes the movie stand out from other “coming of age” films.

“James Ponsoldt, the director and co-writer, he’s coming at it from a parental standpoint,” Bell shared. “He’s an independent filmmaker and he has children now and thought, ‘Gosh, there’s the Stand by Me, there’s a multitude of films that we could talk about that have a young man’s journey on adventure. Little girls don’t have that.’ It’s refreshing, and kind of needed in a way, to think about all the anxiety we’ve gone through in this past two and a half years and children are all feeling that. It becomes universal in the thematics. Ostensibly, you get to exist and follow through with female protagonists.”

“All of these young actresses are so great,” Cooper added. “You don’t get to see little girls having and advenure and it’s just very pure and simple and it has a mysterious element to it as well. I thought it was a really cool addition to the landscape, because we don’t get to see a story like this very often.”

The actresses also reflected on how they related to their characters.

“For me playing a single mom, not electively, you know a cop to boot and doing her best, I feel like it’s a complex situation and kind of just echoes this idea that you don’t know what’s going on at home for people,” Bell said. “You don’t know what people have been through or what they’re currently going through. That’s a great lesson for young minds and a good reminder for others that we’re just doing the best we can. I definitely related to that. I think people just want to be understood and have patience for their story.”

“For all the moms [in the film], and probably all moms, you have an idea of what life will be like. You get married, you have a few kids, you have a mortgage, you think you’re going to have an ideal life and it’s never that. My character kind of rejected that from the beginning and made her own life. Karna is who I would have been if I hadn’t fallen prey to society’s expectations. I got married and did the whole thing, and I just recently got divorced. I’m now starting to realize you do have to make your own life and decide what works for you instead of just doing what everyone else is doing. It’s not going to work out for them the way that they think or for you the way that you think. I just love the way it was written because you got to see that perspective.”

Summering is now playing in select theaters.