Facing as a teenager, with all the contradictions of one's age, the slow farewell to the life of one's older brother, in the hospice where Terri Schiavo was also hospitalized, the woman, who after eight years in a vegetative state due to brain damage caused by a serious collapse, ended up at the center of a global clash over euthanasia.
It is the experience lived by the actress and director Laura Chinn, who uses it as inspiration ("Most of the details are invented but the emotions are real") in the delicate first work Suncoast, a dramedy with Laura Linney and Woody Harrelson, which after the debut at the Sundance Film Festival, where the protagonist Nico Parker won the award for best revelation performance, arrives on Disney+ from February 9th.
An important new step for the twenty-year-old Englishwoman, daughter of an artist (her father is the director and screenwriter Ol Parker and her mother the actress Thandiwe Newton), who has already highlighted herself in the iconic and tragic role of Sarah Miller, the daughter of Joel (Pedro Pascal), in the first season of the series The Last of Us, based on the cult video game.
"Filming Suncoast it was extraordinary to be on set every day with Laura - Nico Parker, now busy on the set of the live action version of How to train your dragon, explains to ANSA -. I was able to constantly discuss the most intimate aspects of the role. From At the beginning I think we were clear that my character, Doris and Laura are not exactly the same person, they have many different aspects.
So I never felt the need to impersonate Laura in giving face to the story."
In the film we meet Doris when for years she has been taking care of her brother, also a teenager, with her mother Kristine (Laura Linney), who has been in a semi-vegetative state for a long time due to a brain tumor.
The boy, now at the end, is admitted to the same hospice, where there is Terri Schiavo, whose case brought demonstrators for and against euthanasia to the facility day and night.
Doris decides to go back to living the typical experiences of a teenager, such as making new friends.
A path in which her mother, increasingly angry and saddened by the fate of her son, is unable to support her.
However, her meeting with Paul, a widower who is stationed with the demonstrators against the removal of Terri Schiavo's life support, helps her.
The kind and generous man becomes a confidant for Doris on the road between mourning and returning to life.
"I always thought of Doris as a character different from me - adds Laura Chinn, co-writer of series such as Children Hospital or Grandpa Suddenly and showrunner of Florida girls -. I was more shy and introverted than Doris, I had more inside contradictions of a teenager while Doris is like an old soul. I didn't know who I was looking for to play her until I saw Nico Parker. She's so funny and smart and bright and full of curiosity. And she's able to dive so deeply into emotions, even those he hasn't yet experienced firsthand."
For Nico Parker, Doris "is a much more mature person than her age. She is so wise, brilliant and intelligent, and is forced to face things that are so different from her peers. At the same time, however, she is also shy and a bit clumsy and like many teenagers, she would just like to have friends. Laura did a wonderful job in creating her, because she gave a complete picture of what it means as a teenager to try to understand yourself and the world around you, but also to have to deal with the knots of life so dramatic and universal."
Among the characters created for the film, there is Paul (Harrelson): "He is inspired by a mentor of mine, who I met at 21, and who has always been so profoundly positive and kind to me.
I wanted to introduce him into the story because sometimes we tend to forget that there are also really good men in the world, I wanted to pay homage to people like that. It's so important for a teenager to have older people around who show you kindness, empathy and generosity."
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