“Montana Story” stars Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague were immediately enchanted by the script for the movie that tells the story of two estranged siblings, Erin and Cal.
“Everything about [my character] spoke to me,” Richardson told TheWrap’s Steve Pond during a virtual interview at the Toronto International Film Festival. “We’ve both been saying how wholly we felt these two characters were written and when you read the script, I felt it because I imagined myself playing her but my mom read it and she felt the same thing about it.”
Teague agreed. “I read the script and he was so complete as a person, I felt like he was a real person which a lot of the times is something you have to create for yourself as an actor. You have to make them feel real so you can play them. But the minute I read the script, he was so real, and it’s so rare to find that.”
“Montana Story” follows two estranged siblings as they return home to their ranch in Montana for their ailing father. Scott McGehee and David Siegel directed and also wrote the script alongside Mike Spreter.
Gilbert Owuor plays Ace, essentially the caretaker of the siblings’ father, and the Kenyan-born actor said he also felt very drawn to the script because it encompassed the feelings he had having been an actor in the United States for 10 years now.
“Having worked as an actor in the U.S. for almost 10 years now, I’ve gotten so used to having to inhabit someone who is not from anywhere close to where I’m from,” Owuor said. “Ace was not originally from Kenya, but he was written I believe as West African initially. But what he was dealing with in trying to navigate amongst the members of this family was something I’ve experienced throughout so much of my time in the U.S. where you are trying to balance your identity as a man but also trying to fit in as smoothly as possible… and here was this script that had all of these elements.”
Watch the full interview above.