How Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells Prepared Like Theater Actors to Master Long-Take Film Scenes

For Miss You, Love You, the upcoming HBO Original film from Academy Award-winning writer-director Jim Rash, the casting process didn’t begin with a breakdown or a nationwide search.

Launching on May 29, Miss You, Love You stars Allison Janney as Diane, a blunt, grieving widow in Santa Fe who is forced to plan her husband’s funeral after her estranged son avoids coming home and sends his personal assistant, Jamie (Andrew Rannells), in his place.

At a press conference attended by Casting Networks, the trio discussed their industry relationships, the innovative way they approached rehearsal, and how personal history can shape a film’s story and the casting process.

Key Insights

Treating a film like a stage play, including memorizing the entire script before shooting, can free actors to stay emotionally present during long, uninterrupted takes.

Silence and physical behavior often communicate more than dialogue, and strong directors know when to trust actors enough to remove unnecessary lines.

Long-term industry relationships and artistic alignment can influence casting just as much as traditional auditions or formal searches.

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Rash, who won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay alongside Nat Faxon and Alexander Payne for The Descendants, got the idea to write Miss You, Love You from an incident eight years ago when his own father passed away. His sister had a work-related conflict, so she sent her assistant, whom no one in the family knew, and who didn’t know a single family member. Rash thought it was an interesting lens to build a story from.

“I started crafting the story of Diane based on little things from my own life, and then Jamie is a lot of me,” confessed Rash. “Writing is therapy. You pull from what you know, and then, of course, the actors elevate it and make it their own.”

When the characters of Diane and Jamie first began taking shape on the page, the voices Rash heard were unmistakably those of Janney and Rannells.

Rash previously worked with Janney on the 2013 film The Way Way Back, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Faxon. “Allison and I, we knew each other socially through a mutual friend, so I met her very early on in my time in LA,” Rash stated. “And obviously, The Way, Way Back.”

While he did not know Rannells, Rash was familiar with the actor’s work on Broadway, including performances in The Book of Mormon, Falsettos and Gutenberg! The Musical!, among others.

Casting the twice Tony-nominated Rannells was a matter of artistic alignment. “I didn’t know Andrew personally, but he was the perfect version of Jamie in my mind. I was just lucky enough that he reacted [to the project] as well,” Rash recalled.

For the two actors, the attraction to the material was instant, driven by the opportunity to tackle the layered characters. “For me, I’ve never been offered a role of this size, and this scope of Diane’s journey is quite extraordinary,” Janney shared. “Everything about Diane, all the different layers and the dark humor, was so appealing because Jim’s writing is so perfect and there’s not any fat in there anywhere.”

Rannells experienced a similar sense of validation while reading the script. “I had never been trusted with this much material in a film or on television before,” he admitted. “It was very exciting. I knew that it was going to be a very unique challenge, but then when Jim was like, ‘And it’s [with] Allison Janney,’ I was like, ‘Well, yes!’”

The “Off-Book” Strategy: Treating Film Like a Play

Faced with an incredibly tight 17-day shooting schedule, Janney and Rannells decided on an unconventional preparation strategy. Because the script was originally conceived as a play, and because the production required filming massive, multi-page sequences all at once, the two leads chose to treat the film exactly like a live theatrical production.

“We were very fortunate [Jim] gave us the time and the space to rehearse it like a play,” Rannells said. “Allison and I spoke before we got started and had the same idea, that the only way to do this was just to memorize the entire script.”

Janney added that committing to that decision and following through before setting foot on set was something she’d never attempted on a film project. “This is the first time I’ve done something like this. We took all of January 2024 to memorize the entire script. Then we showed up in Albuquerque, we hit the ground running, ready to play. It was so crucial to approach something like this off-book.”

This type of preparation allowed the actors to deliver uninterrupted 15-minute takes on set. “This was a movie where we shot large chunks, so we did 13 pages one day,” Rash noted. “These two basically did a 15-minute play for us … so the crew was watching a little playlet. It was about them finding moments, and fast.”

Technical Blocking

This thorough preparation helped immensely on set in terms of blocking and camera moves. During a pivotal emotional argument right before the funeral scene, where the characters confront each other over long-held resentments, Rash and DP Danny Moder mapped the camera mechanics to mirror the escalating emotional stakes.

Rash detailed how the group spent roughly three days breaking down the choreography of that specific fight. “We started with the table, going around the table, and that allowed [the actors] to do the scene,” Rash explained.

He purposefully withheld dynamic camera movements until a specific narrative shift occurred. “We didn’t introduce handheld until [Diane] gets up with the salad,” Rash revealed. “That allowed us to do the next chapter, which was them pretty much boxing around the room.”

Because the long takes captured uninterrupted emotional arcs, the actors could explore non-verbal storytelling. Janney noted that Rash sometimes even cut dialogue on the fly because the actors’ physical choices made those lines redundant.

“Jim would say, ‘You don’t need to say that, because you’re doing it,’” Janney remembered. “He would take lines out of the script because the silence was so full already with what was happening.”

That observation and script adjustment was an actor’s dream. “I love silences,” said Janney. “[These two characters] are so loud with what’s going on inside of them. Silences are earned.”

Rannells agreed, crediting Rash’s restraint in the editing room for keeping those pauses intact. “Actors love to pause, but it usually gets cut,” he observed. “It was exciting to see that Jim had chosen to leave those moments in. That’s to Jim’s credit that he saw what was happening and felt they were important.”

A working actor himself, Rash, who has appeared in projects like Abbott Elementary, Loot and Bros, understood that. He explained that shooting long takes gave him the ultimate flexibility to let the characters breathe.

“It just depends on how much Diane wants to be exposed at this moment … or how much Jamie wants to be vulnerable.”

The first-time pairing between Janney and Rannells also led to another project together for the duo. As production for Miss You, Love You wrapped, the two were invited to join the cast of director Paul Feig’s Another Simple Favor, which filmed in Rome.

Janney recalled turning to her co-star and asking, “Should we? Should we go to Rome?”

They did.

“We finished Miss You, Love You, and then we went to Rome together,” Rannells said, adding that the easy creative shorthand they developed on set quickly evolved into an equally relaxed off-screen friendship. “I got to walk around Rome with Allison and watch her shop!”