From director Anne Fletcher and screenwriter Kristin Hahn, and based on the best-selling novel by Julie Murphy, the Netflix dramedy Dumplin’ follows Willowdean (Danielle Macdonald), the teenage daughter of Texas beauty queen Rosie Dickson (Jennifer Aniston). Struggling to feel comfortable in her own skin after a family tragedy, plus-size Will, known to her mother as Dumplin’, enters the Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant as a form of protest, and with Dolly Parton as her spirit guide, she unexpectedly finds herself on a journey of self-discovery that teaches her about how true beauty comes from within.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, director Anne Fletcher talked about how Dumplin’ came her way, the appeal of the story and characters, developing the script, what made Danielle Macdonald (who’s tremendous in the film) her Willowdean, how Jennifer Aniston brought Rosie to life, how the drag queens fit into it all, and getting new Dolly Parton songs for the film. She also talked about what’s next for her, as a director, and branching out into TV.

Collider:  I very much enjoyed this movie. I just thought it was delightful and sweet, and so much fun.

ANNE FLETCHER:  Thank you so much! Those are all great words to hear.

When you first read the script, what did you most deeply and strongly respond to? Was it the themes and messages of it, was it a specific character, or was it a bit of everything?

FLETCHER:  It takes me forever to finally read something. If I read something, I know that I’m in it for three and a half hours because I do a detailed reading, and I’m a slow reader. So, I was in London visiting my best friend, and my agent called and said, “They are serious about you directing this movie.” I was like, “Oh, okay, I’ll get to it.” I had brought the script with me to London, and half-way through the script, I was looking at friendships and relationships, and the mother-daughter relationship, and Lucy. It was dealing with all of these great characters. By the half-way point, I got to the computer, as fast as I could, and I wrote, “I have to do this movie! I’m half-way through and I’ll finish it, but just let them know that I want to do this movie. No question about it!” Then, my agent wrote back, “That’s so great! I’m so happy to hear that! Wait until the drag queens come into play.” I said, “How do drag queens fit into this small town in Texas, with these young girls?!” I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. To my delight and my joy, they come in and are a treat beyond comprehension. They become the fairy godmothers.

Ultimately, once I got into it and started reading it, there were so many things going on that I responded to. The main reason I wanted to do it was for girls because I grew up with no movies like this. It does not matter what body you’re born in, you’re amazing already and you should not listen to any outside anything that’s going on. I’m a girl, so I know what my girl experience was, and we hear what society has to say – whether it’s teachers, friends, parents, magazines, movies, or whatever – and we somehow internalize it as truth, and we grow up with this lie that’s embedded in our bodies, which messes with our identity of how great we are, just the way we are, period. We try to fix our hair and our skin, and we lose weight, which is crap. I thought this movie really spoke to that, in a fun way, without beating you over the head with a message.

So, I signed on and started developing the script. The main thing for me, besides Dolly’s music being the heart and soul of the movie, was Lucy. You’ve got Rosie and Willowdean, and the driving force is their grief over losing Lucy and how they function, in the world, without their family anchor and the support that makes their family work. There’s this tiny layer of grief that’s playing in there, which I really loved. It’s not uber dramatic, but it’s there. There were all of these little nuggets of the human girl experience. There’s so much going on. And I really wanted to tell the story 100% from Will’s point of view. She’s a 17-year-old girl who hasn’t had any life experience yet, so it’s really her perception of the world. Even though she’s dealing with her own insecurities, the loss of her aunt, her terrible relationship with her mom, and her best friend, all of these things are going on. Hopefully, it will speak to anyone who feels like they might be on the outside or like they don’t fit into the social norms. Hopefully, it just speaks to everybody.

Had you also been reading any other scripts that you were thinking about directing, at the time, or were you just not reading anything, and then this came along?

FLETCHER:  When you do have downtime, your wonderful agent, who’s there to get you work and a job, sends you a ton of scripts. I think I had grabbed five from the stack that I had at home. I was in the process of reading a ton of scripts to see what would speak to me and what I wanted to do next. You learn something from each movie, and you try to apply that to your future, so you don’t make the same mistakes, or you do the same wonderful things that you loved. It’s really about the characters and finding a story that speaks to me. After Step Up, which was my first movie, my agent knew that I really didn’t want to do teens for awhile, and if it was a teen thing, it had to be something so special. Dumplin’ is five movies later, and it was so special to me that I didn’t even finish the damn thing before I said, “I have to do this movie!” As a director, you get submissions and you just read and read and read, until something finally speaks to you.

What was it about Danielle Macdonald that made you see Willowdean in her?

FLETCHER:  We were fortunate enough to see a private screening of Patty Cake$ because it hadn’t come out yet, but we had heard about Danielle. Everybody in town had heard about Danielle and the movie. So, it was just the three of us – myself and my two producers, at the time – at the screening and, at the end of the movie, I just screaming at the top of my lungs because I loved it so much. I’m a pretty audible person, anyway, but I thought it was so well done, in part because of her. She’s beyond charismatic. She’s a fantastic actor, and you just want to be inside of her head, all the time. Of course, like with any movie, I saw her and was like, “I have to meet her! She’s so perfect for the movie.” So, I met her and had a five-hour coffee meeting with her because we just fell deeply in love with each other. I was slightly nervous, just for a moment, that maybe Jen [Aniston] and Danielle might like look like contemporaries because Jen is so young and so youthful. I just didn’t know. I had asked for us all to get together, so that I could see the two of them together, and Jen wanted to meet Danielle. I was already at Jennifer’s house, and Danielle hadn’t gotten there yet. We were talking and the door opened, and I saw Jen and Danielle’s faces, and in that second, I said, “Done! It’s perfect! They’re amazing together!” I knew they’d be great, as actors. I have good instincts about people and what their chemistry is gonna be like on screen, and I already knew that Jen and Danielle are beautiful people. I was like, “This is gonna be a match made in heaven!” It could not have been more perfect.

This is also a different Jennifer Aniston than we haven’t seen before. What do you love about her, in this role?

FLETCHER:  First of all, it’s Jennifer Aniston, so you just know that the woman is gonna be beyond lovable and you can’t take your eyes off of her. There were just so many things about it that I thought she was so perfect for. You have instincts about certain actress’ capabilities. She was already on this movie when I came on because her partner, Kristin Hahn, adapted the screenplay. When you’re thinking about the movie and you know that Jen is already attached to it, you immediately can see her in the role and understand how it’s gonna be told. Then, when I met with Jen to talk about the character, it was so delicious to me because she sees the world like I do. As we talked about Rosie, and we talked about her relationship with Lucy and her relationship with Willowdean, and the choices that Rosie has made, in her life, to bring her to the point that she is when we meet her, we just loved Rosie so much, with all of her flaws and potential mistakes. We all make these choices, as women, all the time, and we would just start crying in the middle of it, and then we’d bust out laughing. Who cries over a character? But, we did. Only Jen can speak to her own personal experience, but she talked about how this woman is very reminiscent of her own mother. I didn’t know Jen’s mom, so I can’t speak to that, but there was something in Rosie that spoke to who her mother was, when she was a child.

One of the other things that ties together why I did this movie was Rosie and the grief of Lucy. Lucy and Rosie were both born big girls. Lucy took the world by storm and didn’t care. She embraced it and loved it, and she was vivacious and took on the world, head on. Her sister, Rosie, didn’t have the same security. All of us women can identify with that. Instead of embracing it and just trying to find her own confidence, she decided to do what a lot of us do and she lost the weight and became skinny to fit into society, so that she could feel like she was a part of it, as opposed to being judged. In her mind, that’s what she thought the world was looking at. Not only did she lose the weight to try to fit in, she then took it a step further and entered a beauty pageant.

One of the main paths in this movie is just to be who you are because the inside is all that matters. The people who are worthy of being in your life will see that, as opposed to what’s on the outside. Who cares about the things that you can’t control? And then, Willowdean is born, and she’s also a big girl. Through Will’s point of view, she thinks her mother doesn’t like her, doesn’t want to be around her and is embarrassed by her because of her weight when, in fact, that doesn’t have anything to do with it. Because of her 17-year-old-youthful perspective, she doesn’t understand that yet. She doesn’t understand her mom and what her life was like, prior to this. She only knows that Lucy looks like her and loves her for everything she is, and told her just be confident and just have a blast in life.

You have some real drag performers in this, but then you have Harold Perrineau. How challenging was that role to cast and what were you looking for, in an actor, as far as finding their inner Dolly Parton?

FLETCHER:  It actually was a very difficult role to cast because they’re so instrumental in the arc of the main character and are the key to what happens. Lee is tethered to Lucy, and Lee is tethered to Dolly. The main thing that I was looking for was magic. When you look into Harold’s eyes, you know that everything is okay. It doesn’t even matter what he’s saying, even though the words are beautiful. What he represents, on so many levels, has to feel like magic, and he has to give Willowdean a place of comfort, in an instant. That was Harold. Harold is just pure love. On top of all of that, Harold is an extraordinarily talented and committed actor, who’s beautiful, inside and out. When I have casting sessions, I don’t wanna see anyone’s resume before they come in the door. I never know who anybody is because I just want to see what they’re bringing to the character, and then I find out afterwards what their resume is. Maddie [Baillio], who plays Millie, this is her first movie ever, but I wouldn’t have known that. She was so beyond comprehension of deliciousness when she came in the room that I basically hired her on the spot. Harold told me this afterwards that he was a dancer for Alvin Ailey. For him to put on a pair of heels and a wig, and then dance around the stage, I’m not gonna say was easy because that’s difficult, even for women, but it was comfortable for him because of his background.

The soundtrack features several re-worked versions of Dolly Parton classics, plus you have new material. What was it like to get Dolly Parton involved, in that way?

FLETCHER:  It was really awesome and slightly effortless, only because the book had existed and had its own huge success, and Dolly had known about it already. Her manager said, “They’re making this movie Dumplin’. I’m not sure if you know about it, but they want to talk to you about the music. She went into the other room and came back with the book and was like, “Are you talking about this book?” We approached her and her manager, Danny Nozell, who’s amazing, and said, “We’re doing this for a very small amount of money, but we can’t tell the story without you. We can’t afford all of your amazing music, but we want to have it in there. We want as much as we can get.” And she was on board, 100%. She said, “What can I do? Of course, I will help you out financially, and I’ll be your partner in this whole thing.” We didn’t want to be greedy, so in the beginning, we said, “Do you think you could re-do one of your old songs, and maybe write one new song for the movie?” We just didn’t want to be greedy. We were just like, “That would be really amazing. If you say no, that’s okay because your classics are everything. They’re golden, and we’d be okay with them.” She was like, “No problem. Of course, I will. I’m so happy to!” My music supervisor, Buck Damon, brought on Linda Perry to pair with Dolly, to create these songs. Next thing you know, we had 16 songs, and they’re all amazing and fantastic. I think really what’s beautiful about it is two talented musicians coming together and inspiring each other, and then one thing led to another and we ended up with all this beautiful music, that are originals and duets of old Dolly songs. It’s just this sweet little movie with all of these little gifts that manifested. People were super excited to participate on it, any way they could. That’s how the album happened. The problem for me was that I wanted to get all of the songs in the movie, but we couldn’t because there was just not enough room.

There really is a lot going on in this movie, and you only had 30 days to do all of it. If you had had the option and could have chosen more of one or the other, would you have wanted more time or more money?

FLETCHER:  That really goes hand-in-hand. If we had more time, we would have made the dollar spread. If we had more money, we would have obviously had more days. I’m not one of those people that ever looks back and says, “Oh, I wish we could have ...”. It’s very hard, especially with performance pieces, and we have so many. That’s a time-consuming thing, from rehearsal to shooting. I also love the challenge. Everyone we hired was on board to do it. One of the other things that I wanted to do for myself, as my own personal challenge, was to hire a brand new crew, do an independent and shoot on digital. It was the first time that I had shot on digital. I just wanted to turn everything on its head, a little bit. The 30 days falls into that, as well. I wanted to see what we could do in this little amount of time. While I was shooting, one of the things that I kept saying was, “We don’t have enough movie. We don’t have enough story. I want to shoot this. I want to shoot that.” I kept trying to squeeze things in. I just was worried, with the 30 days, if we had everything. And then, when I finally saw the editor’s cut, it was two hours and 49 minutes, so we had enough movie. Then, the problem was, how do we take an hour or so out of the movie? Every single frame of the movie was tethered to something, so the bigger challenge was keeping the story’s integrity by taking out over an hour.

What’s next for you, as a director?

FLETCHER:  Film-wise, I don’t know. I’m in that process of starting to read what’s out there, in the world. In the meantime, I’ve started directing TV, which has been great. I did Step Up (the YouTube Originals TV series), and now, this week, I’m starting to prep This is Us. After that, I have another TV show. I’m doing that while I’m trying to find the next thing that speaks to me. I know that sounds so cheesy, but it’s true. Because you end up spending a year, or a year and a half, to three years of your life dedicated to doing and finishing a story, you want to make sure that you love every aspect of it. That’s where I’m at.

How challenging is it to walk onto a show like This is Us, that’s been on for a while and has such an incredible cast that already have established relationships with each other?

FLETCHER:  That was always my big fear about TV. I couldn’t understand it. I was like, “Everybody knows what they’re doing, so why do they need me? I don’t understand.” I learned quickly on Step Up what that meant. Coming into the show, it’s nerve-wracking because you want to do your best work since it’s so beloved by everybody, and it’s so good and smart and emotional, and the characters are so great. On one level, I’m very nervous because it’s a new job, and it’s a great, successful show. On the other hand, I’ve already done a couple days of prep, and the crew is just off the charts professional and amazing. They’re really good people. It’s not surprising because Dan Fogelman, who created the show, wrote The Guilt Trip for me. As a person, he is one of the good ones. Everything comes down from the head, so with Dan Fogelman, of course they’re the best, most talented and kindest people. I’m really excited about working in that environment. I’m nervous, but in the good way because I want to do good. If you’re not nervous, it means that you don’t care anymore.

Dumplin’ is in select theaters and available to stream on Netflix on December 7th.