Jennifer Lawrence Chose 'Causeway' to Avoid 'Spoon Fed, Overstated' Movies

After starring in a "barrage" of blockbusters, Jennifer Lawrence was looking for something more "intimate," which led her to the new drama Causeway.

Lawrence plays a recovering soldier who returns to her hometown of New Orleans within the movie, which she co-produced with her longtime collaborator Justine Ciarrocchi. Theater director Lila Neugebauer also makes her feature film directorial debut in the moving drama.

Causeway made waves on the festival circuit before its launch on Apple TV+. Director Neugebauer and producer Ciarrocchi spoke to Newsweek from the London Film Festival.

Jennifer Lawrence's Movie 'Hiatus'

In 2018, Lawrence announced she planned to take a small break from acting, much to the chagrin of her fans. Don't Look Up, released in late 2021, marked Lawrence's return to movies, but she had intended to make her comeback with Causeway first.

Explaining her return is her friend and collaborator Ciarrocchi. "It was submitted to us for Jen to read, in a moment where she had taken some time off at the tail end of her hiatus. We were being submitted a ton of things," Ciarrocchi told Newsweek.

Ciarrocchi and Lawrence are now professional partners, founding the production company Excellent Cadaver together. Before this, Ciarrocchi was credited as Lawrence's assistant on a number of movies like Silver Lining's Playbook, American Hustle and Serena.

"We've been together for my like, entire professional life," Ciarrocchi explained of her working relationship with Lawrence. After working as her assistant, she then joined the wider team, before eventually they decided to produce movies under the banner of their own company.

"It was a very natural evolution. We were friends first. So I think that friendship preceding the working relationship was major because I think we established a trust, but we also developed our tastes together. We met when Jen was 17 or 18, and I was 19. So we were discovering art and how we felt. So yeah, I got extraordinarily lucky."

Causeway is the first release for Lawrence and Ciarrocchi as producers, with many more lined up. In terms of starting their new venture, the script for Causeway represented the refreshing change of pace Lawrence was looking for.

"[Causeway] was one of the more untraditional pieces we've read in a long time. So much of what we were submitted is hyper-structured, especially in the U.S. where stories are sort of spoon fed to you and everything is almost overstated. It was refreshing to read something that had so much happening in the subtext, it felt like a proper character piece. You could feel the spirit on the page. And I think after a barrage of bigger studio movies, she was very ready to do something intimate," Ciarrocchi said.

Lawrence started the 2010s with awards darling Winter's Bone, but ended it with franchises like The Hunger Games and X-Men under her belt. While on the promotion trail for Causeway, Lawrence has spoken out about her desire to step away from blockbusters.

First-Time Director

Although Neugebauer was primarily a theater director, known for productions like The Waverly Gallery and The Wolves, the team of Lawrence and Ciarrocchi was excited to work with a first-time movie director.

"I was asked would I like to have dinner with Jennifer? I said, 'Yes.'" Neugebauer told Newsweek. "And then I think, the immediate alignment between us both in terms of our connection to the script, and feeling just so organically and naturally connected to one another, felt immediately like an undeniable basis for a very strong creative partnership. Then we were in production only a few months later."

They originally went to work on Causeway pre-pandemic, but obvious delays meant that they didn't get around to shooting the movie until the middle of 2021.

Another sudden change the project had to contend with was the departure of producer Scott Rudin. After receiving multiple accusations of "abusive behavior" on movie sets, Rudin stepped back from all of his Broadway, film and streaming projects, which included Causeway.

Scott is the person who sent me the script for this film, and he was involved in assembling this production," Neugebauer said. "He never traveled to New Orleans (where the film was shot) and I will say he never traveled to New Orleans and he has not really been a part of this project for the last year. But he'd set the ball in motion for sure and brought us together. I think in his absence, what I would say is that it's been incredibly meaningful, over the past year and a half, to see how the producers on this film now stepped forward, and continued to show dedication, tenacity and resilience to the completion of this film."

Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry

The movie's two leads are Lawrence and Atlanta star Brian Tyree Henry.

Lawrence's character Lynsey is a returning veteran, slowly recovering from a traumatic injury she suffered overseas, while Henry plays James, a mechanic and amputee dealing with his own troubled past.

Causeway begins with Lynsey learning to walk and user her body again.

"We had the incredible opportunity to consult at great length with U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs Medical professionals," Neugebauer explained, discussing Lawrence's research into her character. "We spoke to experts in the field of traumatic brain injury (TBI), occupational therapists, physical therapists, and we also spoke with a wide ranging number of veterans and service members, many of whom had incurred TBI is Jen and I spent a day at New York Harbor health, which is the VA in New York, working very closely with OTs and PTs, who equipped us with key insight that informed Jen's physical performance in the film."

For Henry's character James: "We also consulted with people who have lived that experience [of losing a limb] or living that experience physically," the director continued. "We also had to work with some prosthetics experts, in terms of looking at his physicality in the film. I also just think Brian, more broadly as an actor is like Jen, tremendously rigorous in terms of the creative work that he is doing to sensitively enter the life and internal experience of a character."

Causeway is available to watch in limited movie theaters now, but will be available to stream on Apple TV+ from Friday November 4, 2022.