Omni Loop Interview: Bernardo Britto Talks Sci-Fi Drama Starring Mary-Louise Parker & Ayo Edebiri
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Omni Loop writer and director Bernardo Britto. Starring Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri, the sci-fi time loop movie will be released in theaters and on digital on September 20.
“A quantum physicist (Mary-Louise Parker) finds herself stuck in a time loop, with a black hole growing in her chest and only a week to live. When she meets a gifted student (Ayo Edebiri), they team up to save her life – and to unlock the mysteries of time travel,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Congrats on Omni Loop. I really enjoyed the film. The aspect I liked the most was that it just gets delightfully weird as it goes on. There’s the nanoscopic man that just keeps shrinking; the main character is dying from a black hole in her chest. It’s very familiar to our world, but it’s it’s just off enough to where it’s so fun. How was it throwing these really fun sci-fi elements into this drama?
Bernardo Britto: Yeah, it’s funny ’cause it all kind of happens very or organically and, and intrinsically as I’m writing the movie and, you know, some of these ideas that time travel pills in a black hole in someone’s chest, and the Nanoscopic Man and the Last Rhino, a lot of this stuff is things I’ve had floating in my head for years and years and years where I’ve jotted down in a, um, iPhone note at, at some point. And, um, they all just kind of seemed, I mean, there’s so many other ideas that didn’t make it into the movie, but they all just kind of filter their way through this story as I was writing. And it just felt appropriate for the, for the longest time. The Nanoscopic Man was just, who’s this, you know, tiny little guy that, that, you know, shrinks to a nanoscopic scale. Um, that was just something that was talked about in the movie, but we never got to see him.
And then I was like, no, this should be a huge part of this movie. It’s just fun. And, and, um, I think I, I always wanted to make a movie that was about, you know, in some ways there’s a movie about death and about regret and time and, and memory and all these things. Um, uh, but I never wanted to make something that was pretentious or self serious. If I’m going to be tackling these kind of big themes, I want to do it in a way that is me in a way that is funny, that is sincere, but also is fun. So those things are fun to me. I like science fiction, I like movies. I, you know, I like animation and I, I, to me it’s like, I just like, I just like having fun. , that’s the quote. I just like having fun. .
One of the great challenges with a time loop film is that there’s gonna be a lot of repetition, and you have to have the repetition. So was this through the writing phase where you really figured out how much repetition is gonna be shown? Or was it more found out in the edit? How was it figuring that out?
Yeah, I wonder now. I’m thinking, too; it’s just like there have been so many time-loop movies that are even just having another time-loop movie just adds to the repetition of it. We’re stuck in a loop of time-loop movies. That’s a, a different, um, premise for something.
Yeah, I tend to overwrite and then be like, “Oh, I actually don’t need all of this stuff.” So there used to be so many more loops that she does. It felt like, “Oh, I have to show her do this and that.” Then you realize, actually, if you just see someone do something twice in a movie, it’s going to feel like they’ve done it so many different times. So it was really interesting as I kept writing, and as the drafts kind of kept coming along, I saw that I needed less and less to show how repetitive all this was.
There were really smart, small choices that we could do to accentuate that. Like with the kind of like fast cuts and stuff like that that make you feel like she’s been doing this for who knows how many years or whatever. But really, it’s just been half an hour of movie time.
You have a fantastic lead here, Mary-Louise Parker. She gives a really phenomenal performance and she gets to show a little bit of everything. How was it working with her and getting to see her show her full range in this role? It is really great to just let her loose.
I feel the same way. Yeah, Mary-Louise was, was in incredible to work with. She’s such a capital A actor, which I feel like you hear a lot, but it’s always impressive to work with someone like that who has such range and who can so fully inhabit apart. It’s not just about reading lines off a page. It’s really about becoming another person.
She does it all. From the sort of like silly jokes to being kind of at death’s door, from this kind of sci-fi stuff to the more mundane things, she has to do it all. For me, I just felt lucky to have her as a collaborator. I really trust her, not just as an actor but as a writer as well.
She wrote an incredible book called Dear Mr. You that I had read before I cast her. I thought it was just so beautifully written and I think she’s just a smart person that has a really good [mind] for drama. On set, we would be like, “I don’t know. Do we need this line?” And she’s like, “No, you don’t need this line,” or “Maybe move this line here,” or something like that. She was always super supportive of the other actors.
I think the thing that I’m sort of proudest of is that she really brought out of the movie, in a way that I feel like I didn’t do a good job of putting on the pages, is her relationship with Donald, her husband in the movie. I think she did such a great job of making that feel like a real relationship and not just feeling like characters. It really feels like there’s a history between them. There’s a moment towards the end of the movie when they’re in bed, and they’re talking, and I can see the memories in her eyes. It feels like she really experienced those things, and I have no idea how she does it. I won’t take credit for it because all I did was was kind of create the context for her to do what she does best.
You mentioned that you overwrite. I love the ending of this film, and I don’t want to get into spoilers, but was that always the idea for the ending, or did that come around in a couple of iterations?
It’s a weird answer where it’s like, yes and no. That was always the ending. It’s, it’s been the ending for a long time, but it sort of also took a while for me to find it. Um, there was a, a much earlier draft where, well, I don’t wanna spoil what happens in our movie, but yeah, there you go through different things, you try to find something that feels emotionally resonant, and that feels true to the story.
I will say that I, over the course of writing the movie, experienced certain things in life that changed me as a person. My dad retired, my grandpa got sick, and my brother had a baby. I held my nephew for the first time. So all these things kind of have an impact on you as a person, and those things made it into the movie. Definitely, becoming an uncle really kind of like reconfigured the movie for me in a certain way. Because you experience life in a different way. Seeing something exist that wasn’t there before it’s crazy and trips you out. You’re like, “What? This is a whole whole person now.” So thinking about life, that the beginning of life and all that stuff that changed how I was also thinking about the themes of death and what we’re all doing here.
Ayo is so great in this film. I saw this great story where, I think it was at SXSW, but during a Q&A, you called her, and she answered, “What’s up, b—-?” while she was on speaker. She has such a great energy.
Yeah, she rules. She is fun. She is just great. I think for that character, I wanted someone that, that kind of felt very youthful and confident and energetic and just go, go, go. I think Ayo has that, but she also can do the more serious, more grounded things as well. Both of them, Mary-Louise and Ayo, they’re both just great people to talk to. I feel like we just got along as humans first before we got along as collaborators.
Again, similarly to Mary-Louise, Ayo is a fantastic writer, and has written a bunch of TV stuff before. I wouldn’t be surprised — I’d actually be disappointed — if she doesn’t make her own movie in the future. If she doesn’t write and direct something in the future. Because she is insanely talented and loves movies almost as much as I do.
But yeah, she was great. I was very sad that she wasn’t there at SXSW with us because she was directing her episode of The Bear that week. So, I just wanted to feel close to her in that moment. So I gave her a little call, and she answered as she does.
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