Kit Rich has embarked on two distinctly different career paths, but working her way towards her feature directorial debut after building a successful business as a fitness instructor, it’s easy to see now where the two roads converge.
“The idea of pushing through, believing in yourself and staying consistent — these are all key things that are in fitness that I absolutely use behind the camera,” says Rich. “Also just my entrepreneurship in the fitness industry, and all the things I had to learn to start something from scratch allowed me to believe in the possibility of I could do this. I’m in my forties now. I didn’t start this in my twenties and I would invite anybody who has a dream and [might] tell themselves they’re too old that they can’t do it, [that] I am the perfect example of what it might look like to use your previous experience in life [as] tools that you use. They inform your decisions and it makes you better.”
That kind of attitude is surely part of why Rich’s drama “Isabel’s Garden” is so potent, honing in on a woman that slowly starts to find strength as she rebuilds her life following an unfathomable loss. It appears at first that things are on the up and up for Maya (Karen David), a reporter for the local news angling for a seat at the anchor desk and has started to settle into the slightly awkward position of being a stepmother to her partner Diego’s (Manuel Rafael Lozano) teenage daughter Isabel (Gabriela Flores). However, as she’s approached her perfect life with patience, she’s thrust into survival mode upon the sudden and unexpected death of Diego, unsettled by a shared custody arrangement for Isabel that her partner put in his will with the girl’s mother (Valery M. Ortiz) and increasingly distracted at work where a frivolous segment on a hot dog eating contest could put her path to a promotion in serious jeopardy. With the world seemingly crashing down on her, Maya takes refuge in the books she read as a child in part for their familiar comfort, but it could also serve as a potential professional rehabilitation when she comes to believe she has a lead on their reclusive and much-rumored-about author through Grace (Jayne Taini), a neighbor who finds her at her lowest manning a bake sale stand, and pursues it as a story.
Although the tale of a widow finding a new way forward after the love of their life has passed is well-worn territory, Rich finds something new in it as Maya gingerly takes steps out of Diego’s shadow and on her way to discovering her power to carry on allows others around her to recognize the ways in which they may have been standing in their own way. It was a different story, however, behind the scenes of “Isabel’s Garden” where Rich and real-life partner Lozano could work together to create something greater than the sum of its parts and as the film makes its way onto streaming platforms following a celebrated festival run, the two discussed how they brought the film to the screen, getting the best performances from actors who could film scenes across their entire emotional arc in a day, and the happy surprises in how audiences react.
Kit, you’ve had this whole other career as a fitness instructor, so was directing a film a longtime goal or did the bug bite some time recently?
Kit Rich: Yeah, I’ve been in the fitness industry for almost 20 years, but I was always a writer. I wrote some essays and plays and the directing bug happened mainly because every director we reached out to to try to direct “Isabel’s Garden” said no. We’re still waiting to hear back from a few directors on whether they’re going to agree to do it. [laughs] But I’m so glad that happened because forcing me to step up to the plate with Manuel’s help and my producer Giovanna Andolina. It really showed me that this is actually the dream and that now that I’ve directed It’s the only thing I want to do. I’m in love with it.
Manuel, I’m guessing you might have had the inside track to all this but how’d you get involved?
Manuel Rafael Lozano: Yeah, Kit’s my wife, and I always say Pedro Pascal was not available to play the role of Diego, so I jumped in. But what’s interesting is that when Kit was writing the script, I was downstairs in our house and [there was a moment when] she comes down sobbing from the loft where she does her writing and I said, “What’s wrong?” And she’s like, “Diego died.” And I realized, “Okay, this is Diego in the script,” but this is how connected she was to the characters and that helped me connect with the characters. It’s just been a labor of love for both of us and a dream as an actor and a husband to get to work in a film that your wife writes directs and get to collaborate with her at every every point along the road.
Was this a difficult story to crack? The framing of a children’s book and having this character Grace as a conduit for connecting with this author that Maya loved in her youth becomes a really interesting part of this.
Kit Rich: Writing in general is incredibly difficult and there were so many layers to the film in terms of the journey that Maya goes on, so to unveil those layers these characters had to come in to help reveal certain things. Grace actually was the last character to come into my writing process and she was one of my favorite characters to write because she brings a lot of levity and grit and healing to the story, and the idea of the children’s book [came because] I had to get Maya back to life. A lot of the themes of this movie are about nostalgia, so it was about maybe tapping into her childhood to be able to move forward.
Diego is quite a complex character in his limited time on screen. What was he like to play?
Manuel Rafael Lozano: I really loved it. Diego is is a loving father who wants the very best for this blended family and he’s also a painter, so I spent a lot of time preparing for that part. Then having the opportunity to work with Karen David in a number of these scenes is like taking a master class in in acting. She’s just an incredible actress and brings out the best in everybody. I love the work that we did and the work that Kit put into it and what we got out of it.
Beyond having your Diego, what was it like to get this cast?
Kit Rich: Our casting director Jeffrey Gafner was an absolute dream to work with and without whom I don’t think we would have ever been able to get the kind of cast we did with Karen David, Gabriella Flores, Valery Ortiz, Jayne Taini, Veronika Dash, the list goes on. Manuel had worked with Jeffrey for “Teen Wolf: The Movie,” and he reached out to him and said, “Hey we have this script,” and [Jeffrey] fell in love with the script and wanted to work with us.
During the casting process, I was really deliberate about finding actors that innately and intuitively knew these characters to some degree, so that helped me in terms of making sure that they had a connection. They were the characters in a lot of ways, but right before filming we did two days of rehearsal and we treated it like a play. Knowing that we had such a limited time to film, This was my opportunity To talk to the actors one-on-one and to establish relationships with each other. That was one of my most favorite parts of this whole process.
Did anything happen during filming that you might not have expected but you could get excited about?
Manuel Rafael Lozano: Yeah, there was a lot of improvisation that took place in the garden scene and some of that made it to the final cut. As everybody says, there’s a film you write, the one you film and the one you edit, and we had to cut a lot of stuff, but we feel like it was the right decision. I remember having a number of conversations with Kit, [like] “No, you cut that,” and [she’d say] “Oh my gosh, that was my favorite part.” There’s a lot of emotion that goes into it and people get to see an hour-and-48 minutes, but it really represents thousands of hours of work.
Kit Rich: Yeah, because it was my first time being a director and a producer, everything was brand new for me, so everything was an opportunity to learn. And I had to learn very, very quickly, but because I was willing to try things out, it was so unbelievably scary, but also so exhilarating and fun. We pretty much stuck to the script other than what Manuel is talking about, but those garden scenes were some of my favorites. Because we were so limited on time, we didn’t get to play as much as I would have hoped to, but maybe in my next film.
Based on the actors’ schedules, it seems like you must’ve had to shoot certain storylines all at one time. Did that make things tricky?
Kit Rich: It was shot based on location, so that often made things extremely difficult because I would have to have a conversation with Karen, who played Maya and we would [talk about], “Okay, where is [the character] in her headspace at this moment in time? Has she lost Diego yet? Where would she be at this moment?” And Karen is such a master at that. She would put music in her ears to help evoke a specific emotion for that moment in time and that was very very helpful. But the person I felt for the most for was our costume designer Rachel Cocca, who had to constantly switch the outfits at any given moment because we were not doing anything in sequential order. The costumes actually informed a lot, talking with the actors about where they needed to be in their headspace at any given time.
Manuel, what was all of this like for you, putting on your producing hat in addition to your role as an actor?
Manuel Rafael Lozano: It’s really challenging. I have a lot of respect for people that produce and act direct and act their own In their own films. I remember my acting coach, who’s trained a lot of actors that have produced their own movies, said to me while I was preparing for this that every single one of them can wish they spend more time preparing for the role because in the end, that’s what you end up seeing. Nobody sees all the stuff that happens in production They see they see the work that you put in as an actor. So I was fortunate to have an incredible team [with] Giovanna as a producer and our line producer Nick Bergeman. They just did an incredible job, and [as well as] Liz Holland, [our first assistant director], to make sure that we had the opportunity to really focus on what we needed. It was such a pleasure to work with that team.
Kit Rich: I also have to give so much credit to my cinematographer Andrew Fronczak. He made it so easy to look beautiful I could trust on him in that process. And this movie really relied on performances, so when I saw it, I knew it and we could move on.
What’s it been like to travel with the film?
Manuel Rafael Lozano: We’ve seen the movie a lot in a lot of theaters all over the country and we’ve learned so much about what people connect with in this movie. One of the things that was surprising to us was the number of men that really connected with this female-led film with subjects of blended family, hope and grief. That was one of the things that I’m really grateful for — a chance to talk to people after the film and how it moved them. I really love that part of the process.
Kit Rich: I’m actually very hard on myself, so it’s very hard to watch your personal work constantly and to see people in the audience either love it or critique it. It all feels the same at some point. But like Manuel, when I spoke with people one-on-one after the screenings at the festivals, that’s when it really hit me — I’ve known this whole time that this movie was never about me, that it had a beating heart I knew in pre-production and filming and that everybody working on the project brought their brilliance to the table. But when we got to the audiences, I went, “Oh this is for them.” This is for them.
“Isabel’s Garden” will be available on digital and on demand starting January 3rd.