The Power of the Trope as an Emotional Device: A Conversation with ‘Voicemails for Isabelle’ Filmmaker Leah McKendrick

Jill copes with her sister’s death by leaving her voicemails chronicling her chaotic life in San Francisco. When the number is unknowingly reassigned, an elusive Austin real estate agent begins receiving the hilariously confessional messages.

There are only a few filmmakers that come to mind that are consistent in their craft and their voice, especially those that have cast their net from the indie space to bigger studio projects. And one of those filmmakers is Leah McKendrick. A filmmaker with a big bold vision, and telling stories only the way she knows how – from the heart.

I was wildly impressed with her feature directorial debut, Scrambled, and equally impressed with her second outing, Voicemails for Isabelle. It felt like a movie for women and sisters alike – from the comedy high points to the swimming in your Kleenex emotional low-points (and those low-points are great).

Leah McKendrick returns to Script and discussed drawing inspiration from a friend’s comedy show and tapping into her own relationship with her younger sister, the kitchen research process, re-approaching her script eight years later, and the importance of tropes in rom-coms.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Well, you’ve done it again, Leah. Another movie that you’ve knocked out of the park.  What was your way in into finding this particular story?

Leah McKendrick: I was at a comedy show, and my roommate at the time had this really funny bit…and I went to support her… the bit is about her British dad leaving these long rambling voicemails, and he'll be like, 'Oh, yes, the weather was quite nice, and your mother made chicken, and it's 10:35,' he rambles on. And then she got off stage, and then the next girl got up, and she was like, 'That's so nice that your dad calls you. My dad hasn't called me in three years. I mean, he's dead.' [laughs] And nobody really laughed... and I thought it was so funny. That's such a great idea, this girl who keeps waiting for her dead dad, to call her.

And then I thought… if my dad dies, I'm not waiting for my dad to call me… And then I thought to myself, if my sister passed, I would be waiting for my sister to call me. And then I said, no, if my sister passed, I'd just call her. I would just keep calling her. And that's why a lot of the movie, when she leaves the voicemail, she says, "Call me" I think it's a form of denial. I'm going to pretend that you're still in Austin, and I'm still here, and you're still listening, because it's how she survived so much of the trials and tribulations of leaving home and dating and fighting for your career, adulthood. And my sister is just that north star for me, she's the one that taught me what true love is, and it's really hard to find out in the world, especially in romantic love, it's very rare.

Sadie: How much research did you do in terms of creating that environment in the kitchen, and did those specific dynamics in the kitchen reflect on Jill’s arc?

Leah: It was a lot. It was hard for me, because that's not a world that I know… it was not a world that I was familiar with. My original draft, she was from New York, she moves to Hollywood, and she's working in a writers' room, and it's like a CW YA soap. But it's an all-male writers' room, and she's the writer's assistant, and all they do is mansplain all day what it is to be a woman…. and she's just sitting there, 'Is anybody ever going to ask me for my input?'

So what I had always started with, and what I continue to start with… I start from worlds that I know, and that I know the texture of, and that I connect to, and that I have stories from. So you feel a little out there in the cold, a little naked when you're doing research and trying to translate it into something that feels authentic, so it was really hard for me at first to find my kitchen.

But what unlocked it was… I was just trying to find inspiration to make my way into the kitchen, and I was reading about… a conversation that was happening on Twitter, and it said, isn't it interesting that when cooking is in a household it's a woman's job. But when cooking is a profession, it's a man's job, but when you ask any celebrity male chef who his favorite cook is, he will always say, ‘my mom.'

That was kind of what unlocked it, because I went, I can keep what I was doing, which was an all-male writers' room, I can put her in an all-male kitchen, and I can have a celebrity chef who's all sparkle and performance and jazz hands and persona and personality, and not a lot of actual skill. It's just boys club that she's fighting to get into, but the system is broken. So that was finally when I went, OK, that's something that feels like me. Now we're in my playground.

Sadie: The boy chases girl. Wes is an incredibly sincere character, but there is a fine line of him and his actions being creepy. How did you find that tonal balance?

Leah: I think the magic is in Nick Robinson. I don't think the magic is on the page, unfortunately. As much as I would love to take credit for making something like that work. I really do think it was casting, and I think if we'd cast the wrong actor, it would have been creepy and slimy, and you would hate him. I think Nick is just so sincere. Nick is so earnest. Nick tells the truth as a human, and it translates to the screen. Nick's heart is so big, and you see it in his eyes. He means no harm. He couldn't hurt a fly as a human, and you'd follow him anywhere.

But I will tell you, that was a constant conversation and a constant calibration. For example, when they meet on the bench, we shot night plates of the bridge, and there was a conversation, 'we need to lighten it up,' so it looks a little more end of sunset, rather than deep night, and a strange man is sitting next to her - doesn't matter how gorgeous he is, we know a lot of serial killers have been good looking.  So we lightened that up and made it more dreamy, more sun-setty through VFX. My editor, Lee Haxall, was like, 'I'm scared for her, I don't want it to be so nighttime,' and I was like, it's 'Nick Robinson!' and she was like, 'No, I don't like it.' But she convinced me, let's push it a little.

I think our saving grace was that you see that there's wheels always turning in Nick's eyes. He's always trying to find a way to be good to her, and he's misguided, and he keeps missing the boat, he keeps being avoidant. So you're right, it could have been really creepy. I will tell you, I think that the rom-com genre is quite forgiving. We've got a lot of bad behavior from men in the rom-com genre, and I think that we have all decided it's OK if there's a huge arc and he wakes up and he grovels and he bends the knee. And he realizes he never deserved her in the first place, right? I like that too. [laughs]

Sadie: Yeah, it's true. Speaking of the rom-com genre, you definitely know when to lean into the romantic tropes, but you also make them your own. Having that sensibility of knowing when and where to place those tropes for an emotional beat.

Leah: I love a trope in every genre. A trope is a trope because it works. It worked at some point, and it paid off, and it was satisfying. We all loved it, and then we all copy it, and we all wait for it, we expect it, and we want it. So, the running in the rain... and that's why I use it in the beginning when she's running in the rain, but she's running to her sister, because that's her true love. It's not running to a guy. It's running away from a guy. And then at the end, he's the guy is running to find her.

I believe in the devices that we've come to know and love, I think this device of this film isn't reinventing the wheel. I love to play in that sandbox. And I love to subvert it at times, and I also love to lean into it. Do I know when the right time is? Not really. I'm very instinctual, and sometimes I'll realize I was wrong. It's too much, it's too gimmicky at times, and then I cut it.

I'm the best writer that I've ever been today. I was operating at the top of my abilities eight years ago, when I wrote this script, original draft, but to return to it many years later, after having written several studio films and becoming a director and making Scrambled, it was kind of beautiful to read it, and go 'this little cutie,' [laughs] 'we're not doing that, but we're going to keep this' Even now, eight years later, I can see in my original draft the love for the trope, the love for the genre, the love for all of the rom-coms that raised me: Sleepless in Seattle, and Notting Hill, and Jerry Maguire, and the films that I was trying to pay homage to and honor.

Sadie: Your creative collaboration with your cinematographer, Julia Swain. We previously discussed how you two turned the comedy drama on its head visually in your film Scrambled. You two are doing it again with the romantic-comedy genre. What were those conversations that you two were having to dial in the tone and create this specific atmosphere?

Leah: Julia is my work wife. It's one of the most fulfilling, valuable, meaningful relationships in my life, creatively and otherwise, personally. Our bond just strengthens. She's in my head. Our mantra the whole movie, and I told this to all my HOD's, our mantra was, 'Let's make it better than it needs to be.' Let's have a high vision for this. Let's not phone it in. Let's not rely on what other people are doing in this genre right now. Let's do our own thing.

And we did do a whole presentation, because think about it from a studio standpoint, I'm a second-time director, and I have a DP that I'm not budging on, and she's not done a big studio movie. And so I understand that there was probably a desire to pair me with a DP who who's done a bunch of these types of films at this level, but I said 'She's my right hand. We have a shorthand that cannot be created overnight, and we've been in the trenches together.' So we put together this presentation to show what we wanted to do, and we were really looking to films that we thought were really beautiful from the 90s.

We wanted it to look like the kind of films that you would go to the movie theaters and see on the big screen, the golden era of rom-coms, Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyers - that was our high vision, and we thought even if we fall short, it's still going to be worth it. And that we fought and fought and fought, and I'm really proud that it's not super over lit and super bright, and maybe it doesn't quite fit in in 2026 with some of the other rom-coms, and that's OK with us. We're trying to throw it back a little bit, similarly to the rom-coms that inspired the writing of it.

Voicemails for Isabelle is now streaming on Netflix.