For Julia Stiles, years of performing as an actor have provided a unique advantage in her latest creative venture—screenwriting and directing.

Stiles has appeared in nearly every genre across TV and film. She’s done fantasy and animation, teen dance dramas (heck yes, Save the Last Dance), romance, comedy, horror, and action (her face is familiar especially in the Bourne series). 

But she’s popped up in other places, too, taking a spot in the writers’ room for the TV series Paloma and writing and directing a short film a few years back.

This year, with Wish You Were Here, she’s stretching her talent into writing and directing her first full-length feature, an adaptation of Renée Carlino’s bestselling novel. 

Wish You Were Here follows Charlotte, a young woman adrift and unfulfilled at her dead-end job. When she meets Adam, a charismatic artist, their easy connection leads to a passionate night together. But his sudden change of character the next morning leaves her confused and searching for a similar connection elsewhere.

We spoke with Stiles about her process of writing the film, and we learned her years in front of the camera have given her an understanding of how scripts function as working documents for a production.

[L-R] Isabelle Fuhrman as “Charlotte” and Kelsey Grammer as “Dad” in the romance film WISH YOU WERE HERE, a Lionsgate release. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

Acting and Screenplays

I’ve had friends tell me often that improv or acting classes can be helpful to a writer’s process, so I wanted to start there. And it’s true Stiles’ background in the business gave her a leg up in several ways.

“As an actress, I’ve read so many scripts,” Stiles said, reflecting on how her acting experience informed her writing. “I’ve just thought about it over the years, what you need a script to do to help you perform your best or understand what you want to do with a performance.”

She quickly discovered that writing a screenplay means creating a roadmap for multiple members of the team—not just the actors, but every department who helps bring a story to life.

“I really look at a screenplay like an outline for what each department is going to need in order to work together,” she said. 

She also knew she needed to create an entertaining experience for those encountering the story for the first time, through her voice and engaging writing. Hooking a reader from page one is always the goal.

“You want to be descriptive,” she said. “We understand what’s going on. But you don’t want to be too restrictive.”

“Restrictive” in the sense that you don’t want to dictate what members of your team are doing, and locking them into one way of doing or performing. Often, this style of writing will be off-putting to a reader. As many writers and directors advise, Stiles avoided including camera directions and didn’t overwrite any of the actors’ movements or reactions.

“Writing somebody’s inner monologue or writing their backstory doesn’t really help because that’s not going to be seen on screen, unless it’s dictated by the visuals.”

Director/Co-Writer Julia Stiles behind the scenes of the romance film WISH YOU WERE HERE, a Lionsgate release. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.

Her Writing Process

Stiles’ writing process was shaped by the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. While filming Orphan: First Kill with Isabelle Fuhrman, social distancing protocols meant returning to an apartment each evening.

There, after putting her 3-year-old to bed (with Ghostbusters as the occasional babysitter), she would work on the script. The experience of watching Fuhrman perform each day helped Stiles envision her as the lead character of Charlotte.

Having attempted to write original screenplays throughout her career and meeting those all-to-familiar humps of the second act and trying to find the perfect ending (we’ve all been there), Stiles found that the original book offered valuable scaffolding.

“I have tried throughout my entire career at many times to write my own screenplay,” she said. “I’d have all these ideas, but it’s really, really hard to get through 90 or more pages and three acts of a story.”

Carlino’s novel provided a foundation, with Stiles marking up her copy to identify dialogue, settings, and character moments she could turn to whenever she got stuck.

“I feel like in many ways, Renée’s style of writing comes from a very cinematic perspective, a movie perspective,” Stiles said. “But on the other hand, I needed to distill a lot for the sake of a film.” 

The work wasn’t without challenges, particularly in finding the script’s tone. The book is about two characters who meet early on, only to be separated by conflict before a third-act turn. The plot moves from romantic comedy territory (complete with dating app mishaps and roommate drama) into more tragic terrain.

Another unique challenge was losing the romantic lead for a good portion of the middle of the story. Stiles turned to a visual representation of the character to keep him “present” in the protagonist’s mind.

“There’s a big chunk of time where the leading guy, Adam [Mena Massoud], is not in the film, and I needed a representation of their relationship, but also her thinking, ‘Is he communicating with me?’” she said. “So that became the mural. That was a set piece in the book that I highlighted so that I could have a visual representation of it instead of having to revert to text messages or computer screens.”

[L-R] Isabelle Fuhrman as “Charlotte” and Mena Massoud as “Adam” in the romance film WISH YOU WERE HERE, a Lionsgate release. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.

Staying Flexible and Creative

On the shoot, there were additional things that demanded flexibility. A delay due to the SAG strike meant rewriting to accommodate a winter story, instead of summer, for instance.

But Stiles views these kinds of constraints as beneficial.

“There was a change to the script that I made three weeks before we were supposed to start shooting. And it was because I needed to simplify for the sake of production. And to me, it’s the thing that makes the whole movie.”

For other first-time screenwriters, Stiles said that you should write without holding back.

“Don’t self edit. Let it out. And then you can go through the editing process.”

She acknowledged her own past stumbling blocks, which I’m sure a lot of us have also said to ourselves: “Oh no, that’s not going to work. Oh no, this is too big. Oh, we can never afford that.” 

Instead, she advised us to think big initially, then make practical considerations later. You can always scale a story down.

Wish You Were Here will be in theaters January 17, 2025.