From director Gail Lerner and co-written by Kenya Barris & Jenifer Rice-Genzuk Henry, the family comedy Cheaper by the Dozen follows the Bakers, a blended family made up of one mom, one dad, nine kids, two dogs (cleverly named Bark Obama and Joe Biten), one cousin, and two exes, who are just trying to get it all done and hold it all together, albeit in a louder and more hectic way. Zoey (Gabrielle Union) and Paul (Zach Braff), who also own a local eatery that serves round-the-clock breakfast, have a lot going on, but they seem to always manage to stare down the challenges and celebrate the successes.

During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Lerner talked about the collaborative relationship and trust she has with Barris, how thrilled she was that he came to her to direct this movie, how her episodic TV experience came in handy for directing Cheaper by the Dozen, the biggest challenge in pulling all of this together, and the changes made to the film for stronger emotional impact.

Collider: Your directing experience is in episodic television, you’d previously worked and collaborated with Kenya Barris on black-ish, and you were the first person he considered to direct this film. What did that mean to you? What was your reaction, when you found out about this project?

GAIL LERNER: I was really thrilled that he invited me to direct it. We’d collaborated for many years on black-ish. I came to Kenya and he knew me as a writer. I had been directing for several years before, but he hired me as a writer on the show. As the series progressed, I had more and more opportunities to direct black-ish, which was such a treat. That cast is unbelievable. But very often, people see you only in the role that they first hire you in. There are a lot of truisms about how you have to leave a job to get to a higher level, and then you can come back. It’s very hard for people to see you outside the box they originally envisioned you in. The fact that Kenya trusted me and believed enough in my scope and ability, as a director, to literally just offer me a feature, it was just such a huge gift. I felt really seen and really trusted. From the get-go, I just felt huge permission because he knows that I know him, he knows me, and we trust and love each other’s aesthetic. It was a dream, a true dream.

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Image via Disney+

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When did you realize that he was that kind of collaborator and that he was open to you doing different things?

LERNER: I didn’t know about it with me, as a director, until I started directing in Season 2. The very first day of black-ish, I was really surprised. I anticipated the room would be half Black, half white writers. I never anticipated that we’d be half men, half women. Usually, on shows, there are maybe two or three women, but only one upper-level woman. It’s a real problem in the industry, as I’m sure. I said to Kenya, “Wow, there’s three female co-EPS, which is the highest level, short of executive producer, and he said, “I really want a lot of voices of people who are used to feeling like outsiders, but I didn’t want an all-Black staff, and women are really still outsiders, as many strides as women have made in the comedy world.” And I just thought, “Wow, he really cares about point of view. He really cares about difference.” It just told me, right away, that this was gonna be a very special show. He really fostered disagreement in the staff. If any conversation lasted more than four hours and everyone disagreed, he’d be like, “Okay, that’s an episode.” And so, I just knew, right away, he isn’t one of these people who’s like, “Just say back what I said. Let’s do what I said.” He has such a strong vision that he can listen and be open.

What did you learn from your experience with doing episodic television that you were really able to apply to directing this film? With episodic TV, there must be some chaos involved, and this seems like an entire movie of chaos.

LERNER: Yes, you are not far off. The big thing in TV is that we’re used to going really fast because we only have five days to shoot 34 pages. If things aren’t working on the fly, as the director, there’s a writer or two on set with you, and I bring both perspectives, we’re adding jokes and changing jokes. If a location suddenly hints at a gag that you didn’t know before you saw the geography, we’re just really making it up as we go. That was a great attitude to bring to directing. In the best way, I take it not quite as seriously. I look at it as a very living process. I come in totally prepared, but that means I can throw it away and play with the actors, based on where we are and what’s actually happening. And we’re just used to going faster. The idea that I could spend an entire day doing two pages, at first, I was like, “What do you guys do all day, around here?” But then, you just realize that you get the opportunity to do so much more coverage and discover the scene. It’s a luxury, and also a sprint. It’s a luxurious sprint.

You’ve got nine kids, you’ve got two dogs, you’ve got a cousin, and all these things are happening at once. What were the biggest challenges or the biggest surprises, in trying to bring all of that together?

LERNER: The biggest surprise for me was that I really thought the biggest challenge would be getting everyone to gel as a family. I think the magic trick of this movie is that you believe this family with all these different people. It’s bigger than a soccer team, I think. I don’t know about soccer, but it’s a huge group of people who are also different from each other, in ages, races, experiences, and temperaments. We have to believe they’re a family. But from the first day I came on set, there was just this infectious bubbliness. All the kids were taking selfies and showing each other their favorite TikTok sites. Zach [Braff] and Gab [Union] were already connecting. Erika [Christensen] and Gab knew each other. It felt like I was already walking into a family. So much of that, the cast just did by their energy and their excitement about the project. That was amazing.

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Image via Disney+

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You have all of the chaos of these kids and these dogs, but then you also have Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union, who was also a producer on this, anchoring the production. What was it like to have two actors at the center of this, with so much experience?

LERNER: It was a godsend because I knew, going into the day, that we would get everything on the page, with great humor and nuance. I knew we would get what we needed. And I also knew that they would just bring their A-game, in terms of physical comedy and ad-libs. They’d pull me aside and say, “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we did this? It feels more in character, if I do this.” It was a comfort level and an awareness that I would hear them. I tried to be for them what Kenya was for me, which is, “I know you, I trust you. The world knows you and trusts you. Here’s our chance to play together and really set your mark on this amazing film legend.” I don’t wanna say franchise, but it’s a vibe. With Cheaper by the Dozen, you know that you’re getting family fun and chaos, and I knew that they would ground it and be role models for those kids, whether it was just teaching them what marks were or teaching them how to be focused, and then also just wrangling them, as the adults on set.

Were there any major changes, either in the script stage or once you got on set, or even in the editing process? Did anything really change or shift, or did it stay pretty close to what you thought you were making?

LERNER: It stayed very, very close to what we thought we were making. One of the biggest changes was that I didn’t really feel like I did a good enough job on the montage of Gab parenting alone when Zach goes to San Francisco. It just didn’t feel the way it would with too many days of solo parenting becoming too hard to do with a group that big. So, we said, “How can we create a montage with what we’ve already shot?”

When you see those shots of Gab waking up in the morning, that’s different takes of the exact same setup, and we digitally gave her different color clothing. In the scene where she’s tossing all the Cuties (oranges) into the lunch boxes, listlessly, by miracle, she was wearing a white blazer that day, so we could just change the color of the blazer. That was a happy accident. That montage was really born of necessity, and we totally created it in post.

Another thing that I really loved, that just became clear as we were shooting, was that Dom and DJ had a much smaller reconciliation scene, but [Timon Kyle Durrett] brought so much heart and love to the character, and Andre [Robinson] brought so much vulnerability to DJ, that I just said, “We need to give them a bigger scene.” That was one of the only scenes that changed, just to give it more significance and more depth. Now you see how important it is to DJ that his dad accept him and see him for who he is, and you see Dom, this confident, arrogant guy, willing to go way out of his comfort zone. That was something that was really important. We just felt like we needed it, so we grabbed it.

Cheaper by the Dozen is available to stream at Disney+.