‘Dear Edward’ Takes An Emotional Look At Grief, Connection, And Resilience

It may sound a unusual, but it was a combination of a school subject and some purposeful inhaling and exhaling that brought two actors together.

This connection happened during the production of Dear Edward, a series focused on Edward Adler, a 12-year-old boy who survives a devastating commercial plane crash that kills every other passenger on the flight, including his own family.

As Edward and others all over the world try to make sense of life after the crash, unexpected friendships, romances, and communities are formed.

The series is based on the book of the same name by Ann Napolitano.

Colin O’Brien, who plays Edward, explains how he got into character, saying, “Well, I certainly used some things from my own life to play roles and I think that’s kind of a thing I focus on a lot.”

Prepping for certain scene, he says, “I remember I would sometimes just put my head down. I would just think things through. I would close my eyes and take a drink of water.”

Then O’Brien reveals how a personal helped him evoke certain emotions, saying, “For example, during the pandemic, we lost our grandpa on my dad’s side, and we couldn’t really have a funeral for him at the time. So, I used things like that to try and help me bring life to this character and make it seem more real.”

Taylor Schilling plays Edward’s Aunt Lacey, who becomes his guardian following his parents’ death.

Explaining how the two established a believable connection, Schilling and O’Brien admit that they didn’t exactly discuss any acting techniques.

“[He] taught me a lot about rocks and crystals,” says Schilling. “I learned a lot about lava and things [that] cool underground.”

“We were just going over this segment in school and I started talking about it to her,” explains O’Brien. “After that, she got me this malachite rock and we would talk about [that].”

But O’Brien also remembered, “On the first day of our shooting, I told her that I was nervous because this was my first lead in a project, and she walked me through these breathing exercises, and they were really helpful, and I still use them.”

“[So, it was] rocks and breathing,” says Schilling, summing it up and showing how through these personal exchanges the duo related to each other, and the material.

Creator and executive producer, Jason Katims, who also helmed Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, says that in his writing process, “It’s always about people. What I’ve tried to do in whatever project I’m working on is to find that human connection.”

To do this, he says that he works to, “get underneath the characters, write from the inside out and find what it is that we’re all looking for and then what are the obstacles to that? Our own flaws, our own pasts, our histories, all of those things. All of those things go into the equation.”

He adds, “I’ve also just always loved people’s voices. I just love to listen to the way people talk and the words they use and how they interact and the silences between things, and then [I] try to incorporate that into writing.”

Katims admits that sometimes his emotions just get the better of him, even while working. “I’m a crier. I’ve cried on set. I try not to let [the actors] see me, but, in this particular case, it’s a story so much about resilience and the power of the human spirit, and the fact that people, under these extraordinary, very difficult circumstances, are redefining themselves and finding their own power. I feel like when you get to tell stories like this, you have to open yourself up emotionally.”

He laughs a little as he admits, “It’s ridiculous to cry — over the words that you wrote, you know?”

While Dear Edward is based on a book, which has a clear ending, Katims says that he’d love to do more seasons of the series, and that he has set up some storylines in the narrative that could continue.

With this season he feels, “The story begins with this event that’s very dramatic, but the story is ultimately about these people, and the relationships that have been formed, unexpected relationships with people who never would have known each other [but] who have become deeply connected through circumstance. [This leads you to ask], ‘is there more that I want to know about these characters? Is there more story to tell?’ And I definitely feel that way, so I think there’s an opening for a future.”

‘Dear Edward’ is streaming now on Apple TV+.