JOHN KRASINSKI CHANNELS HIS INNER CHILD!

HE FATHER OF TWO SHARES HOW HIS DAUGHTERS INSPIRED HIS FANTASTICAL NEW COMEDY IF

- ERIC ANDERSSON

For John Krasinski, making the new movie IF was truly a family affair. The idea to tell the bittersweet story of imaginary friends forgotten by the kids who dreamed them up came, in part, from his own daughters. Krasinski, 44, recalls being at home and watching Hazel, 10, and Violet, 7, the girls he shares with his wife, Oppenheimer star Emily Blunt, 41, “disappear into a magical world that we, as parents, aren’t allowed into,” he says. “I said to Emily, ‘That would make an amazing movie.’”

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “They started doing fewer imaginary games, and they started to let the real world in. They started asking bigger questions and then finally said, ‘Are we going to be okay?’” he continues. “I said to Emily, ‘That’s kind of the definition of growing up, isn’t it? When you let fear in?’ I thought, ‘I have to do this movie right now to show them that magical world they created, they can go back.’”

The result is a story about 12-year-old Bea (Cailey Fleming), whose widowed father (Krasinski, the director and writer) is hospitalized with health issues. Bea moves in with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw) in a Brooklyn brownstone. There she meets a neighbor, Cal (Ryan Reynolds), who, like Bea, can see the IFs (imaginary friends)— animated characters voiced by a cavalcade of stars including Blunt, Steve Carell, George Clooney, Matt Damon and Bradley Cooper. Boston native Krasinki, who previously starred on The Office and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, talked with People about making his fantasy a reality.