‘Turtles All the Way Down’ Director & Author on Isabela Merced’s Brilliance

The Big Picture

• Isabela Merced’s portrayal of Aza in ‘Turtles All the Way Down’ is deeply emotional and authentic, bringing the character’s thought spirals to life.
• Director Hannah Marks masterfully captures Aza’s internal struggles from John Green’s novel through visual storytelling and a complex love story between friends.
• The car scene between Aza and Daisy was a challenging yet crucial moment in the film, highlighting the portrayal of mental health issues.

[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for Turtles All the Way Down.]

Directed by Hannah Marks and based on the bestselling novel by John Green, the drama Turtles All the Way Down follows 17-year-old Aza Holmes (Isabela Merced), who’s trying to be a good daughter, friend and student, all while her own thoughts betray her. As the obsessive thoughts consume her in a spiral she feels helpless to control, it doesn’t leave much time for having fun with friends or getting closer to a crush. If she’s going to find a way to live with her thoughts instead of letting them rule her life, she’ll have to find a way to stop internalizing it all, accept love, and know that not every day will be perfect.

To tell such an internal coming-of-age story, casting an actress who could convey Aza’s thought spirals was crucial, and Marks and Green knew that Merced could more than handle the job. Finding herself personally identifying with her character, Merced brought her whole self to Aza every day she was on set. It’s a role that she felt so deeply that the audience is right there with her through the good times and the tough times.

During this interview with Collider, Marks and Green talked about bringing such a deeply personal story to life, the scenes that felt like they were lifted directly from Green’s imagination, how Marks wanted to be a storyteller whether that be as an actress or filmmaker, telling a complex love story between best friends, the challenge of shooting the fight in the car, and figuring out how to visually represent Aza’s thought spirals.

Author John Green Was Sold On This Adaptation of ‘Turtles All the Way Down’ Thanks To Director Hannah Marks

Collider: John, what is it like for you to experience adaptations of your work? Some of your stories feel easier to bring to life than others. Does every experience feel different?

JOHN GREEN: This time it was really hard for me, in some ways, because the story is very personal to me. I’ve lived with OCD my whole life and that’s an important part of Aza’s character and the story. And also, the way that the book is written is so language-based. It’s so much about her trying to find language and form for this psychic pain that she’s in. And it’s so interior and abstract that I really worried about whether it could be a good movie. I worried until Hannah [Marks] came in and pitched herself as the director, years and years ago. She brought with her this two-minute video that she’d put together and that video felt like a thought spiral to me. It felt like she’d already found a visual language to describe this experience of intrusive thoughts. Pretty much from that moment on, I was like, “As long as Hannah’s our director, we’ll be fine.”

Is there a scene in the film that it felt like was just lifted entirely from your head, from the words on the pages of the novel?

GREEN: There’s so many of them. The double first date at Applebee’s is one that comes to mind. The scenes inside of Davis’s house when they first see the Raymond Pettibon painting felt very much like it was just lifted from my imagination. And then, much of the stuff later in the movie feels like it’s lifted from my imagination. It was hard for me to watch some of those days because I was worried about Isabela [Merced] and worried about myself. There were some intense days there, but also big laughs. Being with Bela and Cree is to be laughing.

There’s something so special about watching the two of them together throughout this. Even in the toughest parts of this, you just want to hug them.

GREEN: You wanna hug him, and there’s something fatherly in me. With my own kids, I always wanna protect them from hurt, but of course, that’s not possible.

HANNAH MARKS: I feel like their mom, as well.

Hannah Marks Has Gone From Bratty Teen Daughter on TV To Filmmaker With a Unique Vision

Hannah, the first thing I remember seeing you do was the TV series Necessary Roughness, and I have to say that I never would have imagined you going from there to here on your career journey.

MARKS: That’s gotta be 15 years ago now that I did that show. I was just the bratty teen daughter.

GREEN: I remember.

MARKS: I became the character that did the product placements.

GREEN: Which is a real skill in acting. That’s an underappreciated skill in acting, to open up the trunk of the Subaru Outback and be like, “Wow, this is surprisingly spacious.”

MARKS: I had to be like, “Mom, I love your new Lincoln.” That was a real moment I had. I also had to sell some honey mustard pretzels, but they were delicious. That’s so funny that you’ve seen that. Sorry to derail it.

I’m just curious if this was always the goal for you, even when you were doing that TV series. Did you have a moment where you wanted to get serious about focusing on directing?

MARKS: I got into acting as a kid because I loved movies, and also because my mom was an actress. She was a child actor who started at six years old, and I grew up doing plays with her. So, I did love acting, but mainly I loved movies and I didn’t really care how I was involved in movies. I just wanted to be a part of it. I always thought it was so magical, and it’s always been such an escape for me. So, my goal is always to just serve the story the best I can, in whatever capacity that is, and to be as close to movies as possible.

I last spoke to you for Mark, Mary & Some Other People, which was an unconventional romantic comedy. This is an unconventional coming of age story. Is that unconventional nature something that you find yourself specifically drawn to, or is that not something that really even occurs to you?

MARKS: I love to find the balance. I love a story that I think a lot of people will be able to connect to while also doing something a little fresh and different and left of center. For me, it’s about finding the thing that’s not so niche that it won’t have an audience but, not so down the middle that it doesn’t have anything new to say. I really look for that.

GREEN: In this movie, [Hannah] really found a way to make it about two love stories. There’s the love story between Davis and Aza, which is the love story we expect as movie viewers. And then, there’s this really rich, complex love story between these two best friends. It turns out that friendship and that love is just as important, if not more important, than romantic love.

MARKS: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown to really appreciate the relationship between Aza and her mother, Gina. I think that’s really beautiful. I’m so close with my mother and my mom has watched me deal with similar issues as Aza. I think this was an important story for her, as well.

Which ‘Turtles All the Way Down’ Scene Was Director Hannah Marks Most Nervous To Shoot?

What was it like to figure out how to shoot that fight in the car between Aza and Daisy? So much is going on in that moment, and yet there’s nowhere for the energy to come out of because they’re in such a confined space. What was that like to figure out?

MARKS: That was actually the scene that I was the most nervous to shoot. It was my favorite scene in the book. I was blown away by that scene. I thought it addressed something I’d never seen addressed before, which is that mental health or mental illness can sometimes come across as selfish to other people. I thought it really portrayed both sides, flip sides of that coin, and I’ve never seen that before. I felt a lot of pressure to understand both Aza and Daisy’s perspective in that scene because I felt it was so well-written. And doing car scenes, in general, is really hard. It’s very hard to find a long enough stretch of land that you’re allowed to have to get through what was a very long scene. So, you’re looping your car in circles and just praying. I really don’t like filming scenes and vehicles, but thankfully, Isabela and Cree auditioned with that scene, and they were true professionals and made it easier on me.

GREEN: [Hannah says she doesn’t] like to film in vehicles, but two of the iconic scenes in this movie occur in vehicles. The Outkast scene is so good and is in a vehicle, and then [the fight scene].

MARKS: It’s because I over prepare for those scenes, specifically because I’m dreading them so much.

GREEN: I’m just [saying that she’s] very good at shooting car scenes, even if [she doesn’t] enjoy it.

MARKS: Thank you so much. I just feel bad trapping the actors in there for so many hours.

I loved that Outkast scene in the car. It made me immediately wonder what one CD I would want to have in the car if I couldn’t listen to anything else.

MARKS: What would yours be?

Mine would be Green Day’s American Idiot.

GREEN: That’s a great album.

MARKS: A classic.

Do you guys each have an album?

GREEN: My son’s would definitely be Green Day’s American Idiot, and it’s not a bad candidate for me. In the book, it’s Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, and it’s true that actually happened to me. I actually did have a tape stuck in the car and it really was Missy Elliott. I really did come to believe that Missy Elliott is a genius on a level that none of us currently appreciate. I think we’ll listen to her music in 100 years, the way we listen to Louis Armstrong. I think she’s a genius. And so, I would definitely pick Missy Elliott.

MARKS: And I picked Outkast. I won that battle. That’s what made it into the movie. I was very excited. When we first rehearsed that scene, Isabela did “Miss Jackson” in Spanish, which was incredible for me to see, and we got to put a little bit of that into the movie too.

This whole idea of fear of contamination seems terrifying because of how debilitating it is, but at the same time, how do you even get the audience to understand what that is when it’s something they haven’t experienced. Hannah, how did you approach figuring that out? How hard was that to do and how long of a process was it to figure out how to capture what’s going on in her head in those moments?

MARKS: I struggle with a lot of what Aza struggles with, so for me, it wasn’t too much about figuring it out. I really connect with her deeply. It’s why I loved the book so much. So, it was more about, “Okay, how can I translate this on screen in a way that feels very specific to this character?” We’re not trying to portray all forms of OCD, or everyone’s experience of OCD. This is Aza’s experience, and hopefully within that specificity, you find what’s universal. So, it was just following my heart, following the source material, and thinking about approaching how her brain works, which is not always logical, and sometimes at a different pace and rhythm, and has a different sound or different visual. It’s not always the germs or the diseases that she’s imagining. Sometimes it’s memories that come completely out of left field. I just tried to really think about how I experience things and how I felt during the first time I read the book.

GREEN: The stretching and condensing of time, through the pacing and through the way that it’s cut, is part of what I think is so brilliant about this. It feels almost like David Fincher to me.

MARKS: Our editor, Andrea Bottigliero, did a really great job of understanding what I was going for in that. She also really deeply connected to Aza and was honored to be the one cutting that material.

Isabela Merced Was the Perfect Aza for ‘Turtles All the Way Down’

Why do each of you think Isabela Merced was the perfect representation of this character? What do you love about what you saw in her, but also what she brought to it that you might not have expected?

GREEN: In terms of what I saw in the audition, I just thought she was brilliant from the start. She sounded like Aza to me, even in the cadence of her phrasing. And then, in terms of when we were on set, there’s just a brilliance to her. She was willing to bring her entire self to the part, which is not easy to do, and I felt that every day. She was there every single day, and every single day she was bringing her whole self to it. I think that’s why you feel it so deeply when she’s going through good times, and you feel it so deeply when she’s going through hardship and experiencing pain.

MARKS: I was particularly blown away by her thought spirals in the audition. She read the voiceover, and it could be very easy to just read it and try to sound good, but she brought so much emotion and soul to it that we were all like, “Wow, that’s our girl.” She also brought a ton of levity to the scenes with Daisy, which was really important because not all actors can do both things. She really was able to encompass the whole being, which was so important for us. In this story, in particular, we want to show the good and the bad.

Turtles All the Way Down is available to stream on Max. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Max