W&W
WHAT IS THE STORY OF THE UNBREAK- ABLE BOY, AND WHO DO YOU PLAY IN THE FILM?
ZACK: I play Scott Laurette, and the story of the unbreakable boy is a true story about Scott and Teresa Laurette and their two sons, Austin and Logan. Scott and Theresa meet and know they start falling in love on their third date. they get pregnant with Austin, which is definitely a curveball, but they're like hey let's do this let's figure this out as we go. Austin is, as they come to find out, born with osteogenesis imper- fecta, which is brittle bone disease, which is yet another curveball, but they keep, you know, journeying and walking with that, and then they have their second son, Logan, who is born seemingly healthy, and then a few years go by, and Austin is behaving in some atypical ways, and then they have him tested, and they find out that he is on the autistic spectrum, so the movie is re- ally about a family kind of navigating those waters while, you know, Scott and Teresa are still navigating figuring out their own internal conflict in themselves, figuring out their relationship, and figuring out how best to love their children.
Can you talk about meeting your real-life counterparts?
Zack: I met the real Austin the first time I met him, about a week into filming, he sent me a message on Instagram and said hey I hear you're portraying me in the movie. I'm really excited to meet you. Our family thinks that you're going to do great, and so I mes- saged him back, and very quickly we got on the call together, and I was really excited to meet him he was incredible, and then a month later he and his family came down to the set actually it wasn't a month later, but around 2 weeks later, he and his family came down to the set, and we were able to meet them in person, and it was incredible they're lovely people.
Zack: I think initially I had a phone call with them, so I got to kind of pick his brain about their story you know Scott was very brave, and Theresa was both in Scott writing their story in the book the unbreakable boy that the film was based on, and so I was able to kind of glean, you know, a little bit from those conversa- tions, and then ultimately when they came to visit us on set, we got to, you know, spend more time with them and learn more about their dynamic and their energy.
obviously you know when you're making a film, there are some artistic liberties that are taken, and you know how to piece all that together, but the script that John Gunn wrote was really such a beautiful script and a great blueprint for us to follow ultimately in making sure that we were, you know, honoring them, honoring their story, but yeah, we got to spend some really good quality time with them while we were making the film.
What was it like working with your incredible co- stars and your director, Jon Gunn?
Zack: yeah I mean, it was a beautiful family that was really God-breathed. I mean, you know, the movie came