Love can blossom in the most unexpected of times.
That's a theme Katie Holmes explores in her new movie Alone Together, which premiered July 22. When developing the rom-com set during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the actress exclusively told E! News' Daily Pop that she was inspired by people's pandemic love stories…good and the bad.
"The inspiration behind the film really came from a lot of the stories that I read about—all of these different stories on Reddit and this and that," she told Daily Pop's Francesca Amiker on July 22. "It was really either people falling in love quickly or people, unfortunately, breaking up, ending their marriages."
With the amount of pain the world has gone through over the past few years, the 43-year-old shared that she "wanted to tell a story about people coming together as opposed to falling apart."
The movie follows Holmes' character June, who arrives at the Airbnb her boyfriend (Derek Luke) rented in upstate New York only to discover it was accidentally double-booked. And after her BF bails on the trip out of the city, she forms an unexpected connection with the house's other tenant, Charlie, played by Jim Sturgess.
In addition to writing and starring in the movie, Alone Together marks Holmes' second film directorial outing, having previously directed the 2016 All We Had. Despite being at the helm of the project, Holmes told Daily Pop that her favorite part of filming was "the collaboration of everyone on set."
"You have an idea, you write something," Holmes—who began dating musician Bobby Wooten III in April—continued, "and slowly, other people's creativity comes into the mix, and it becomes everyone's movie."
Holmes's collaborative environment was a key element for Sturgess. As much as the Across the Universe actor enjoyed working with the Dawson's Creek star on camera, he told Daily Pop it was just as fun to work with her as a director, saying, "Katie gave everybody the space to be creative."
"There were times where she just didn't say 'cut,'" Sturgess joked. "I was like, 'When is she gonna say 'Cut?''"
Check out the full interview above.
Alone Together is in theaters now.