It’s always a delight chatting with Kaitlyn Dever, but it was especially exciting to finally welcome her to Collider Ladies Night! Dever is currently celebrating the release of Dear Evan Hansen this weekend, but she’s had an especially exciting and very busy journey to this highly anticipated film.
The movie is the big screen adaptation of the Tony Award winning musical that sees Ben Platt returning to the title role. Evan Hansen is a high school student struggling with anxiety. His therapist suggests he write letters to himself, but one day, a troubled, school outcast named Connor (Colton Ryan) takes one of those personal and very private letters. Soon after, Connor takes his own life and when Connor’s mother (Amy Adams) finds Evan’s letter, she assumes Connor wrote it to Evan and that they were close friends. Evan plays along and perpetuates the lie in an attempt to ease her pain, and do the same for Connor's sister, Zoe (Dever), as well.
During our Collider Ladies Night conversation, Dever took some time to revisit the beginnings of her career and offer some insight into how her hopes and expectations for “making it” in the industry have changed. She also highlighted a particular co-star who shares a similar process and discussed what it’s like adapting to different directors.
When we hit the Dear Evan Hansen portion of the chat, we spent a good deal of time discussing her collaboration with Platt. If you’ve watched even a single episode of Collider Ladies Night, you know I often ask about the value of a good scene partner, a question that felt vital here given Platt’s connection to the material and also the amount of heavy, emotional scenes they share together. Dever began by highlighting Platt’s deep understanding of the story and also his willingness to play with it:
“First off, just to say, I think Ben, because he’s lived with this character for a while, he completely understands this character on such a deep, deep level that when that’s already there and you have that as a foundation, you can go anywhere with that, you know? And so I remember on set, with [director] Stephen [Chbosky] in particular, we were playing with a lot of different versions of the scenes, and that was really, really exciting. And I think Ben was always just really, really down to do that.”
Dever continued by pinpointing an on-set habit they share that wound up enhancing their work in the film:
“I am not the type of person to really, really stay in a scene unless it really, really calls for it. If it’s a really super emotional scene, I may want to stay a little quieter that day and keep to myself, but in general, I’m laughing right before they call action. So, Ben is one of those people, too! I really appreciated that about him, is that we were constantly giggling and joking around before we were doing scenes together. And it just keeps everything light, and it keeps everything really, really loose and it takes you out of overthinking something too much.”
Dever also recognized that Dear Evan Hansen is an especially high pressure project given the nature of the material and the powerful fanbase it’s already amassed. But, she noted that Platt became a key supporter in managing the nerves that come with that:
"I was a new member of the team coming into this widely loved story and I was incredibly nervous, and Ben was, from day one, just from the moment we left Los Angeles to go to Atlanta together — we literally flew to Atlanta together — he was immediately super comforting and welcoming. And just every day on set was exactly that and it was just the best. I remember my first day on set he was just the sweetest. He was a really big supporter throughout the entire thing and I’ll never forget it.”
Looking for more from Dever? Trust me when I tell you there’s a whole lot more from where that came from! If you’re looking to hear more about her earliest auditions like the one she did for Justified, what it was like working with Kathryn Bigelow on the set of Detroit, how Dever’s Booksmart co-star, Beanie Feldstein, reacted to her Dear Evan Hansen casting and more, check out Dever’s Collider Ladies Night episode at the top of this article or listen to the conversation uncut in podcast form below: