Cooper Raiff Says Lili Reinhart’s ‘Hal & Harper’ Performance Is Indescribable

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer, director, and actor Cooper Raiff (Cha Cha Real Smooth) returned to Park City for the World Premiere of his drama series Hal & Harper. Joined by his castmates, the group sat down with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff to discuss the inspiration behind the decades-spanning show that took Raiff six years to pen (landing him with a 300-page script) and only 50 days to shoot Season 1.

Hal & Harper stars Raiff and Lili Reinhart (Riverdale) as the titular codependent siblings who are struggling to process their pasts when their dad (Mark Ruffalo) puts their childhood home up for sale. In the eight-episode show, Raiff and Reinhart delve into old memories to make sense of their present, where they portray their younger selves.

Along with costars Havana Rose Liu, Alyah Chanelle Scott, Christopher Meyer and Addison Timlin, who also serves as an executive producer along with Reinhart, Raiff and Reinhart swung by Collider’s media studio at the Rendezvous Cinema Center to discuss how Raiff’s direction provided a safe space to explore personal approaches to their characters and how his experience as an actor set them up for success during long shoots. They also share how they tapped into those deeper emotions and brought themselves to the characters. You can watch the full conversation in the video above or read the transcript below.

The Idea for ‘Hal & Harper’ Came From a Personal Place

“I realized I should start digging into my childhood.”

PERRI NEMIROFF: There’s no world where what you made is not one of my absolute favorite things that I’ve seen at Sundance, so huge congratulations. Clearly, I know what Hal & Harper is, but Cooper, I have to give you these duties because you’re celebrating a festival premiere. Our audience might not know about Hal & Harper just yet, so can you give a brief synopsis?

COOPER RAIFF: Hal & Harper is about two siblings who have a very close, codependent relationship, and it’s also about their dad. Their dad is having a baby with his long-term girlfriend, and he’s selling the childhood house. They’re going back in time a lot to deal with the pain that childhood house holds. That’s my best logline.

To dig into the writing process now, I was reading that you were writing the show on and off again for something like six years, and I really love hearing about how stories evolve based on the new things you can find in them and also how you’ve grown as an artist. What would you say is the biggest difference between how you pictured the show turning out on day one and the final product everyone’s going to see now?

RAIFF: It started as a funny idea that I had about two adults playing themselves as first and third-graders, and it was just about how their dad made them grow up too fast. Then I was like, “Where did that idea come from?” And I realized I should start digging into my childhood. So, the show kind of came from this funny idea of adults being surrounded by kids, and then I was like, “Where would they be in the present?” And it became about them in the present and them going through changes and going back into the past to see how they became who they are today.

I’m definitely coming back to that idea in a minute, but before that, I wanted to follow up on something else I read in our press notes. You mention that when you took the script out for financing, it was hard to get people to read it. I have a feeling I know why, but why do you think that was the case and what did you do to inspire people to read it and give it a chance?

RAIFF: It was 300 pages. I think that was why it was hard to get people to read it. We got people to read it because I think we lied. I think I lied, and I was like, “We have offers coming in, and you better read it!” And they eventually all read it, and it was all fine. But it’s hard to get someone to read 300 pages.

It’s hard to make independent TV.

RAIFF: It is.

I love the fact that we see more festivals like Sundance embracing independent television now.

Cooper Raiff Created a Space Where His Cast Could Flourish

“I was going through a lot during this … and he made me feel very comfortable.”

I want to open this question up to the entire group, minus you, Cooper, because it’s time to make you blush. It’s a little bit of a hard thing to articulate, but with every single thing he makes, I find that he’s able to create such a unique tone, cadence, and warmth to all of his pieces that just clicks for me. For each of you, can you tell me something that you observed him doing on set that maybe speaks to that singularity and why everything he makes is so uniquely his own?

LILI REINHART: Something I really appreciated as an actor for my director, and with his previous work, as well, is everything feels so real and so lived in. On set, when you’re shooting long days, long hours, whatever, sometimes you get into a mode of almost autopilot acting—or I do—and he would come over to me and say, “Feel it in here. Drop it down.” You would say something like…

RAIFF: Drop it down.

REINHART: It was a good reminder. You would say, “Feel it in your body.” And that was just always a good reminder that I was literally acting on autopilot if I was tired or something like that.

RAIFF: We were shooting, like, 10 pages a day.

REINHART: Yeah, but that was a really good note and a way to remind myself that, like, this is a real human being that I’m playing, and to let what I’m saying flow through my body and not just live right here, coming out of my mouth, but to let it live, and come from my chest, basically. That was just a really great experience.

ALYAH CHANELLE SCOTT: I will say, yeah, there’s something great about being directed by an actor because you’ll do a take, and you’re like, “That wasn’t it.” And you’ll look over, and Cooper’s like, “That wasn’t it, right?” And you’re like, “Yeah, okay. Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you so much. I feel so validated, and I don’t feel rushed. I feel like I can be honest with you about, like, “I didn’t buy that.” And you’re like, “Okay, great. We don’t have to do that.” There was a day that I had to do this crying scene outside…

RAIFF: It was one of your first days.

SCOTT: Yeah. It was like the second day I got there, and you were like, “What do you need? Just tell me what it is, and it’ll happen.” And I was like, “Wow, okay,” and the tears came almost immediately because I just felt so comfortable. So, there’s something great about having an actor just know that everyone’s process is so different, and just having the space to have a process is nice.

CHRIS MEYER: Like she said, I feel Coop just made it so comfortable for me, specifically. I don’t know if it’s our closeness in age, but our interpersonal relationship outside of set and work just felt like one natural friendship, on-screen and off-screen. I was going through a lot during this, and I deal with that in the show, and he made me feel very comfortable letting that go.

HAVANA ROSE LIU: Cooper has a really special way of allowing you to be open and then reminding you that those are also your tools and your gifts to be used for the art that you’re making. Like, I felt like we were able to spend a lot of time unpacking some of our own processes into relationships, thinking about love dynamics, thinking about all of these things really openly and honestly for days beforehand, and then on the day be able to reference some of those things, even if they were personal things I had shared, being like, “And also, remember this thing because it’s applicable here.” It was a nice invitation to be able to enter the work in a more personal way, and I think it takes a special sort of person to be able to bring that out initially and then also to be able to bring that back into the work in a way that’s respectful.

ADDISON TIMLIN: Something that’s really unique about working with Cooper, and you guys can all attest to this, is that he is holding so much in his brain and also editing the show in real-time while you’re in a scene. So, there’s a really good trust there that you know when you’ve got it, you’ve got it. It’s just always coming from a really loving place of everyone feeling really connected to the things that they’re saying and doing in the show.

Lili Reinhart Reveals What Helps Her Find Her Characters

“I felt like I could walk on set and just be her.”

To start to dig into characters, Lili, I’m going to come your way first. I’m not sure if this is the same for you, but another actor recently explained to me that when you start a new TV show, it can be a little scary because you’re on unstable ground, but then you have that moment when you think of something or you do something, and you know you have just found your character. Did you have that with Harper, and if so, when?

REINHART: That’s such a great question. But I do feel like I had it before, and I think it was just coming from my relationship, my friendship with Cooper. Getting to know him and know each other for a full year before we shot was, I think, paramount, and you couldn’t have put a price on it. It created going into it like a brother-sister relationship. We had a couple of rehearsals with Mark [Ruffalo], and I remember texting you and being like, “Rehearsals to me are just so… It’s gonna be better than that!” And he’s like, “No, I trust you. It’s good.” But I think just the comfortability. I felt like I could walk on set and just be her. But also, wardrobe helps so much to me. So, honestly, I don’t feel fully in character until I’m on set in the outfit, talking to the other person. So, I did feel prepped to be her before, but it doesn’t really come alive for me until I’m sitting there looking into her eyes, or her eyes, or his eyes, and that’s where you lock in.

RAIFF: Do you remember your first scene? You were third-grade Harper. I’ve experienced so much where an actor, like on day seven, will be like, “Oh, I figured out the character,” and I’m like, “What? We’ve shot seven days!” But I remember your first scene, and my favorite thing of the show is Lili playing third-grade Harper. You can’t even describe it. But that was the first scene, and I just burst into tears and was just so excited.

I always feel like a jerk asking actors, “How did you do that?” But when you’re playing the younger version of your character, how do you make sure you’re doing that with your whole heart and respectfully so that it doesn’t come across as a gimmick? It’s a fine line there, and I think you both do it exceptionally well.

RAIFF: Lili just tapped into something. Especially with third-grade Harper, not a single note was given. It was just like, “We can do it again,” but she was just tapping into something that I think the story wanted to happen. All of their performances, it’s like, “How can we get into that tapped-in place?” But no one was ever in their head with a performance. It wasn’t like, “Am I doing the seven-year-old right or the nine-year-old right?” It was just like, “This is what the story and the art needs.” That’s what it felt like.

Related

Mark Ruffalo and Lili Reinhart Are Family in Cooper Raiff’s Indie Series ‘Hal & Harper’

The production has received permission from SAG-AFTRA to continue despite the strikes.

For the four of you now, I want to ask you about your characters in a way that pertains to something that Cooper described in our press notes. He was saying that there were rewrites and lots of talks with the four of you to figure out what felt right and wrong with your characters. Can each of you tell me something about your character that you discovered during those conversations that made it purely yours?

SCOTT: We kind of talked about this when I auditioned, and we had a Zoom. We talked about the idea of what it means to come into your adulthood through a relationship and how you cling to this person as part of your identity, and the fear of letting go of that, of how long you hold on to something even though you know it’s not right for you. I’ve just felt like there’s so many times and days where we kept coming back to, like, “Why is Jessie still fighting to keep this thing?” And then it was like, “No, we know why.” Because I did that. You did that. We’ve all had these moments. I feel like that was one that just felt so personal to me that we got to play out, and the character, too.

TIMLIN: Well, I am a parent myself, and I play a mother in the show, so that was always a really big part of me finding and knowing that character. I just felt like she’s teaching Harper things, and she’s also relearning herself as she’s sort of in this new chapter in her life, as well. But really, being a parent myself kind of carried a throughline for me in just connecting with every character on this show.

MEYER: It was really interesting because there were a lot of synonymous things that were happening in my life. Our friendship in the show reflected on my friendships in real life. I definitely am a leader in my friend group, and it’s weird sometimes being like that, and then you have a friend that is as codependent as Coop. It helped me realize a lot of things in my actual friendships. Also, my grandmother had passed two weeks before I started shooting, and the character goes through that, too, so that wasn’t even that hard to tap into. You know what I’m saying? I just had to live that, and he made it a very, very easy process for me to do that and getting my space and.

LIU: Piggybacking on that idea, I feel like Cooper brought stuff out of the character. Working together, we found things about the character that we didn’t initially maybe have on the page, but also a piece of it was figuring out aspects of ourselves to bring to the character that maybe we didn’t even know about ourselves to bring to the character. So, it felt very multifold in that way. I won’t disclose what those things were because that is way too personal, but yeah, there were many there.

I’m going to end on one greedy question for you, Cooper, because I love the show and now I can’t help but wonder, do you envision this as a limited series?

RAIFF: Sure! Yes.

REINHART: Whatever you want!

RAIFF: We’re just saying whatever you want. [Laughs]

Special thanks to our 2025 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Rendezvous Capital and supporting partners Sommsation, The Wine Company, Hendrick’s Gin, neaū water, and Roxstar Entertainment.

Hal & Harper

Release Date

January 26, 2025

Runtime

110 minutes

Director

Cooper Raiff

Producers

Thomas Hartmann

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