Steven Spielberg‘s latest work in by far his most personal yet – it’s a semi-autobiographical and semi-fictionalized memoir. Instead of calling it The Spielbergs, he has given his family the name The Fabelmans, but it’s very much based on the life of the young Steven.
Gabriel LaBelle, who plays Sammy (the Steven stand-in), Michelle Williams (who plays his mother), and Seth Rogen who plays ‘Uncle’ Bennie, have all been speaking about how special it was to work on such a personal film for one of the greatest directors of all time. LaBelle told The Hollywood Reporter; “Sometimes we’d all do a group hug at the end of the day. You could feel it, it’s a really personal project and it was really special for everybody to be a part of, so everybody just understood. It was actually really comforting.”
“He would cry a lot, openly,” Seth Rogen said of Spielberg. “We’d show up on set and he would just see a certain piece of wardrobe, sets or props, or everyone coming together to recreate a certain thing. I saw him cry dozens of times throughout filming the movie which was actually very beautiful and I think made everyone want to really honour what he was doing. You saw how much it meant to him and how truthful he was being.”
“I have friends who have worked with Steven Spielberg and it’s been surreal for everyone I know, but also, the added layer of it being such a deeply personal film, it was something that was not lost on anybody,” Rogen continued.
“There was a point that I went up to Michelle [Williams] and was like, ‘You’ve worked with Scorsese [on Shutter Island], does this seem different than that?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh this is way different. This is a singular experience.’ Which I was glad she verified my feeling that that’s what was happening.”
There definitely won’t be a dry eye in the house once The Fabelmans is released on November 23.