Screenwriters Bryan Woods and Scott Beck recall how the actor-director fought to make Millicent Simmonds his onscreen daughter, a move that “brought an extra depth to the film.”

The silent world of A Quiet Place was made more authentic thanks to a smart casting choice by actor-director John Krasinski.

Millicent Simmonds (Wonderstruck) delivers a powerful performance as part of a family trying to survive in utter silence. Like her character Regan Abbott, the actress is deaf in real life.

“We always had a deaf character in the script, but John really pushed for them to hire Millicent,” says Quiet Place co-screenwriter Scott Beck. “She came to set and taught everyone sign language. It was really amazing and brought an extra depth to the film.”

Beck penned the script with longtime friend Bryan Woods, and the duo share a credit with Krasinski.

“The kernel of the idea came to us when we were in college. We were making microbudget films and studying film history,” recalls Woods, who has been best friends with Beck since sixth grade. “We fell in love with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and all the things that can be accomplished without sound. We wanted to do a modern-day silent film that lived in the suspense genre.”A Quiet Place centers on the Abbott family as they live in silence due to an invasion of blind, sound-hunting monsters. The creatures are lightning-fast and heavily armored, leaving little hope of a resistance effort. Krasinski and his real-life wife, Emily Blunt, play parents to two young children: a fearful son with emotional issues (Noah Jupe) and a frustrated, deaf daughter (Simmonds).

“After we landed on the concept, we had to define how people interacted in that world. How do you survive without sound?” says Woods. “The most important part of the film outside of its concept is the family and its issues. In our minds, the issues predate the monster event.”

In the film, the family is dealing with the weight of a recent loss, while coping with the constraints of silence. Krasinski’s character Lee attempts to build a device to aid his daughter’s hearing while also soundproofing the barn in order to prepare for the upcoming birth of Evelyn’s (Blunt) baby.

“Having a mother give birth in this scenario is the most dramatic thing imaginable. This is a world where silence is survival and noise is death,” says Woods.

Evelyn’s pregnancy could be interpreted by viewers as reckless, given that a moan or an infant’s cry would draw the monsters to slaughter the entire family. But that’s not how the writers see it.

“We explored a lot of ideas. One of the early ideas is that Emily’s character was pregnant before the event happened, so they were stuck with the baby,” says Woods. “The idea that the final film embraces is that this family is trying to find normalcy in a world that’s turned upside down. They’re trying to find hope.”

Beck says that finding hope was key to the script.

“Movies like this can get really down and dark, so it’s important to have your character believing in something,” he says.

Assuming that the amount of silence in the film would make the chances of selling the duo’s spec screenplay low, Beck and Woods devised a unique strategy. See full article at The Hollywood Reporter