Julia Stiles plays Clio, the younger, drug-addicted sister to Heather Graham’s character in Chosen Family, also written and directed by Graham. The iconic actor who’s starring in films like 10 Things I Hate About You and the Bourne franchise praised her Chosen Family director and costar for being a “kind and respectful” leader on set.

“Heather was so great at making people feel at ease on her set and I think actors do bring a lot to the director’s chair, she was collaborative, but she also had a very clear idea of what she wanted,” Stiles told Yahoo Canada. “Because I know that we probably share similar experiences, I was comfortable on set and she’s just very kind and respectful, which sounds silly, but it’s not always the way people behave.”

In Chosen Family Ann (Graham) is a yoga instructor who’s trying boost the popularity of her classes. In her personal life, Ann hasn’t been particularly lucky with dating, going from one terrible dude to the next. She’s also a people pleaser, particularly with her religious father Alfred (Michael Gross), her mother Dorothy (Julie Halston), who’s focused on wanting to be an entertainer, and their expectation for Ann to manage Clio after recently coming out of rehab.

Ann starts dating Steve (John Brotherton), a contractor’s whose estranged wife seems to be dragging out their divorce. But Steve’s relationship with his daughter, Lilly (Ella Grace Helton), causes some significant tension in the relationship, with Ann relying on her friends Max (Thomas Lennon), Frances (Odessa Rae) and Roz (Andrea Savage) for support.

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‘Luckily they didn’t fire me and it was fine’

In Chosen Family Stiles gets to really lean into her comedy skills and similarly to her character Maisy-May in the Canadian Prime Video show The Lake, both characters are pretty terrible to their siblings.

“I love comedies and people don’t really think of me in comedies,” Stiles said. “There’s a thread here that I’m just picking up on, which is, in the last few years, I keep gravitating towards these characters that are kind of irredeemable.”

“But I think what it is, especially in a comedic setting, is they say and do all the things on screen that you’re not allowed to do in real life. … At least they’re not pretending. That’s, I think, what I’m gravitating towards. … [Clio] is kind of a hot mess, but she also is totally unapologetically angry with the world.”

Stiles also gets to exercise her physical comedy muscle in Chosen Family, with the film featuring a funny fight scene between Ann and Clio. The sisters start physically fighting on a public stage, where Ann is meant to be teaching a yoga class.

In a little filmmaking secret, Stiles was actually pregnant filming that moment.

“That was crazy,” Stiles said. “I was very newly pregnant, where you’re not supposed to tell everybody, so I thought, OK I’m just going to keep this to myself and not stress [Graham] out, not jeopardize the film.”

“So we get to that stunt rehearsal and I’m like, oh I guess I better say something. So I just sort of blurted out to her and to the producers that I was pregnant, and luckily they didn’t fire me and it was fine. They offered to get a stunt double, we didn’t end up actually using a stunt double, but we were able to choreograph the fight so that I was kind of always in control of making sure that I was protecting myself. So that was a little secret going on.”

‘It’s so much more beautiful and cool than if it had been somebody else’

In speaking about Chosen Family ahead of the film’s release, Graham has continued to advocate for the support of women directors and writers, and having women making decisions behind the camera, in addition to being in leading roles in movies.

A perfect example of the impact of supporting women filmmakers from Chosen Family is when we see Ann in a bikini, trying promoting her yoga business on social media. While Graham was also famously in a swimsuit in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, for example, Stiles highlighted that it feels different to watch when it’s a circumstance where Graham was the one making the decisions.

“I noticed when I watched the film, I was like, you know all the scenes where she’s recording the videos for social media and she’s in a bikini, her amazing body, iconic body, but it’s so different that she wrote herself in that position and directed herself in that position,” Stiles said. “It’s so much more beautiful and cool than if it had been somebody else kind of convincing her to be in the bikini.”

As Graham said on the “In Her Words” podcast by Women in Entertainment, receiving a particular budget for Chosen Family was dependant on getting a “famous man” in a lead role. But it was actually Stiles being attached to the project that greenlit the film.

“To hear that is really, really nice,” Stiles said. “I kind of knew it when she sent me the script years ago, and I was also trying to set up my own movie, and in the time it takes to get a film financed I wanted to remain committed to Chosen Family, because I wanted to help her see her movie get made.”

“It’s great that the movie could have been financed based on the two of us. … It’s funny to talk about film financing though too, because it’s very subjective. The way that films get financed is all over the place, but it’s nice to know that I could help.”