With Tully released in UK and US cinemas today, we take a look back at director Jason Reitman’s recent Tribeca Talk at the film’s New York Premiere, where he discussed collaborating with writer Diablo Cody for the third time. “She had a two sentence description of the movie. I said ‘that’s amazing, you have to write that.’ Then it was like six weeks later that this script showed up. And that was the shooting draft that we went and made. She’s a pure writer, she knows what the first scene is and then she just starts writing. She kind of walks into the woods and walks out the other side. It took me seven years to write Up In The Air, I don’t know how she does it!”

“We really think of these three films as linked now, Juno, Young Adult and Tully. I think of them as movies about not knowing where you are supposed to be in the timeline of life. Juno is about growing up too fast, Young Adult is about growing up too slow and Tully is about that moment when you become a parent and you are forced to grow up. You are forced to stop occupying a space that your child must now occupy and it is the moment where your younger self seems to become a different person.”

On working with Charlize Theron, Reitman detailed the acting styles he’s encountered as a director: “actors fall into two categories for me. There’s human puppets, who are very good at puppeteering themselves and if you describe ‘I need it to come across like that’ they can puppeteer themselves to appear that way. They can be very good at that and I’ve worked with some great actors who can do that. And then there’s the other group that are actors who are lost in it and they actually feel what their character is feeling. Charlize is one of two actors I’ve met who is strangely both. She’s a hundred percent aware of everything that’s happening around her, crew wise, camera wise, acting wise, on set, in the scene but simultaneously knows exactly how to get in touch and be vulnerable.”

Jason Reitman’s Tully written by Diablo Cody starring Charlize Theron is in UK and US cinemas now.