Ben Is Back Director Peter Hedges on Working With Son Lucas and Julia Roberts

When Julia Roberts accepted the role of Holly in Ben Is Back she had one request for director Peter Hedges—that he cast his own son, Lucas, to play her beleaguered son in this poignant movie about addiction, recovery, broken promises and redemption.

While certainly flattered, Peter was initially reluctant because Lucas already had commitments and the father-and-son duo had been hesitant to work together on a film. But Roberts was so impressed by Lucas’ work as a teen orphan in Manchester by the Sea, she knew that he was perfect for the title role in Ben Is Back.

This riveting drama is about 19-year-old Ben Burns, (Lucas Hedges), who unexpectedly returns home from rehab to his family’s suburban home on Christmas Eve. Ben’s mother (Roberts) is relieved, welcoming and wary of her son staying clean.

Over an extremely turbulent 24 hours, new truths are revealed, and a mother’s undying love for her son is tested as she does anything — and everything — in her power to keep him safe.

Roberts and Lucas, who also stars in the new emotional film Boy Erased, give stunning performances, and Peter weaves this tale with such fatherly care it makes one family’s struggle so real and intimate that it often feels like these actors are your own friends and neighbors.

Here is an inside look at the making of Ben Is Back from an exclusive interview with writer-director Peter Hedges during the recent 27th Philadelphia Film Festival:

You have to be a proud father after making Ben Is Back with your son, Lucas. 

Oh, you went right for my heart. Yeah, I am really proud. Speaking of family, my mother, right before she passed away wrote me a letter. Her note read, ‘people always say to me you must be so proud of Peter and I say, I’m proud of him not because of his big career but because he’s kind, he’s decent, he’s a good father and a good husband. Those are the qualities to measure when talking about being talented or successful.’... I always think of that when I talk about Lucas.

Had you worked with Julia Roberts before your movie Ben Is Back?

No, I’d met her two times before, but we had not worked together.

We all know what a stellar actress she is, so what did she bring to this role of Holly?  

First of all, she believes that everything Holly does is right, while I think Holly is making a bunch of mistakes. Holly starts lying throughout the movie. One of the things I wanted to show is how to balance all of the aspects of a family dealing with this disease....So, I think one of her qualities, which makes her really remarkable is that she’s a huge movie star, but she feels very real. She’s so fragile in this part at times and so fierce in other moments. I knew from the fact that she’s been working so little these last years since she’s had three kids, that she’s a mom first and foremost, and that’s really what matters most to her. So I felt strangely confident sending the script to her because I felt like that with Holly, I’d written the most broken and heroic mother.

How did Julia Roberts persuade you to cast Lucas in Ben Is Back?

Lucas wasn’t available when I first met with Julia. He was going be doing a different play on Broadway.  Within two weeks after I met with Julia and she committed to do the film, Lucas' plans changed and he was available and Julia found out and started texting me, texting Lucas and calling him. She really thought he should do the film. I thought if I’m an actress, I don’t know if I want my director to be directing his son. But she just felt that he’d be great in the part. I think he loved the idea of working with her, and he liked the script enough that he would navigate the discomfort of being directed by his father.

Is it difficult to direct your child in a movie?

Mostly it was not hard because we had a bigger goal, which was to make the most impactful version of this film. The first day was hard because he had to do a big first scene. And of course, I was nervous— worrying if we were getting it. But by day three, it wasn’t hard anymore. A lot that is due to the fact that he’s so prepared and he cares so much.

Why did you want to make this movie?

I wanted to get back to my core goal, which was to make urgent, raw, relatable work. I wondered what would happen if I recommitted to creating original work.

Why did you choose this topic of substance abuse, recovery and how it affects every member of the family and not just the addict?

My family’s been decimated through drug and alcohol addiction. Not my immediate family, but I have had childhood experiences and I’ve buried too many friends. So, I just wanted to make films like Pieces of April, which is the favorite thing I’ve ever made. Now, I’m 15 years longer in the game. I wanted to see what would happen if I just let myself go for it. I guess I wanted to put a story into the world that was useful and impactful.

I know parents who recently lost an adult son to addiction and violence. So, I saw your movie in some ways as ripped from the headlines and asked myself 'can we prevent this?'

Yes, we can prevent this. There are a million things that we can do that will make it better. First of all, we have to understand that it’s a disease. It’s not a choice. We need to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for their massive impact on creating an epidemic. They lied to us about what those pills do. Our jails are filled with young people who need treatment. There’s so much to be done. But one of the first thing that needs to happen is that we have to increase our compassion for people that are in the throes of it. It’s hard for people who don’t have an addictive nature to understand why someone else would be. So there’s a ton of work to do, but no, I don’t think it’s hopeless.

What is your vision for this movie now that it is in the theaters?

I feel like what the film can do beautifully is it can shine a light on people who are doing their best in a very hard situation. I hope that I can help increase some compassion and some knowledge. I met a young man at a recent screening who said, ‘I’m six years clean, but I realize watching this movie that I’m still thinking it’s all about me. And it wasn’t until I saw this movie and I saw my mom in Julia Roberts.’ So, he said he realized what he put his family through and needed to leave the theater and call his mom and say that he was sorry. This is what I hope will happen.

As a mother, I totally believed the lengths Holly went through to save Ben. It reminds me of the adrenaline rush that gives a mother superhero-like powers called “hysterical strength.”

Yes, mothers who can lift up the car in dire circumstances, I definitely believe it. In my movie Pieces of April, Bobby (Derek Luke) tells that to Katie Holmes’ character. And it has been such a touchstone for me. It’s about who and what you love, and if you love someone so much, you have uncommon strength on their behalf. You see it with mothers and fathers whose kids have medical conditions that require 20 operations. I see it with friends who have children on the autism spectrum, and I’ve watched the heroic things that they do on their behalf.

But that’s not exactly the same as addiction.

True, but I think the difference, of course, is that there’s still a lot of people who think that addicts deserve what they get. I don’t know if I moved the needle tremendously in an audience’s compassion for that, but I tried to explore various aspects of this in the things we looked at.

Did you purposely leave the ending ambiguous?

Yeah, and I felt like it was the right amount of hope. It felt honest.

Talk about the vibe on the set of this 30-day film shoot.

It was a very happy set, for the most part, particularly the first half of the movie. We almost shot it in sequence. So we did all the family scenes before Christmas. I think we had 10 all-nights in a row, and those are brutal. Those scenes were just harder and harder. It got hard for me because I couldn’t sleep and was extremely sleep deprived. I’m sure it got hard for them. I make sure when I direct that it’s a very joy-based set that hopefully is filled with a lot of respect.

What kind of director are you?

Well, because my films are really about how people interact with each other, and the complexity, and the nuance, and the surprise of those moments I try to create a safe enough space that allows the actors to operate from their own instincts. My direction is more suggestions, prompts or questions.

Do you know what’s next?

I’m actually writing a couple of scripts. I want to make a series of films of contemporary America that feel urgent and deal with sometimes-topical matters, but hopefully in a universal way. One of my scripts deals with what it means to be a man right now. Two of them are dealing with race and socioeconomic disparity. I feel like I’m ready to do the work I’ve been preparing my whole life to do.

What is your legacy as a writer and a film director?

They are all stories that I care about. I worked as a writer on A Map of the World, which is a very hard story about a baby who drowns in Sigourney Weaver’s pool. About a Boy that I got to work on is about a man who’s a boy, and a boy who’s a man and how they help each other grow up or become kids again.  And The OddLife of Timothy Green is about what it means to be a parent. Many of these movies are about family.

Very different movies but they all resonate with us.

Yes, different, but they feel like they’re cut from the same cloth. They’re small stories often about the human condition on their best day in their best moments. I hope I make six more movies, and hope they are in the vein of Pieces of April and Ben is Back. We will see. The kinds of movies I make are not easy to get made. I always need a Steve Carell (Dan In Real Life) or a Julia Roberts to make it happen. It is truly amazing what happens when Julia Roberts wants to make your movie.