Bryce Dallas Howard is furthering her family legacy. You know her from memorable roles in The Help, Spider-Man, Twilight and the Jurassic World franchise to name a few, now like her father, Ron Howard, known best as Opie in The Andy Griffith Show and Richie Cunningham on Happy Days, then went on to have an amazing directing career, Bryce too is stepping behind the camera for her feature directorial debut with the documentary Dads. We talked with her about why she admires her father, the famous comedian fathers she got to open up about parenting, and how she’s seen her husband adapt as their family has grown.
Family Entourage: You’ve directed short docs, and TV episodes, but this is your feature directorial debut. Congratulations! I have to ask with your dad being a little reluctant at first — he’s such a great director , and I’m sure extremely accessible for you — what did that professional relationship look like? And do you want to continue behind the camera?
Bryce Dallas Howard: Well, [dad] he didn’t see the movie really until it was done, for real. Honestly, he was really nervous the whole time and sort of was just hesitant. He just was like, “Bryce, no one’s going to want to watch a movie where you’re putting me on a pedestal.” He’s constantly like, “One day, Bryce, one day, you’ll knock me off the pedestal. I just want you to be ready for it.” Because I really do have him on a pedestal. I really, really do, but I do feel it’s earned. Nobody’s perfect. Absolutely nobody’s perfect, but he is, in my mind, pretty darn close to it. He’s just such an admirable person and tries so hard and in such earnest to be good and grow. To see as man in his sixties always insatiably curious, always wanting to grow in ways that are often, I can imagine for anyone, challenging. So I just really, really admire that.
So, he was very nervous. But when he saw it, he was really emotional. We watched it at the Toronto Film Festival and that was really meaningful and a great moment overall for us to get to experience together. Totally wild, like nothing else and so personal. As we were nearing the festival, I was like, “Oh my gosh, what have I done? I opened to this movie with my birth. What did I do?” But so many of the subjects of this film, the dads, they were so vulnerable and really trusting. So in a way it’s the least I could do, to offer little family tidbits myself.
It was awesome and fun, and yes, I do hope to get to do more documentaries in the future. Absolutely. And I’m for sure cooking up another one.
FE: Most of the families that you’ve highlighted, the kids are really little, with the exception of the foster family that you had in there. Your kids are getting a little bit older and you even have a teenager! So how have you seen your husband’s fathering skills adapt through the years?
BDH: He’s remarkable! This is something that I will forever be grateful for, when we had our oldest, who’s now 13, like you mentioned, I really suffered with postpartum and struggled and just the instant that Theo was born, Seth held him and was whispering in his ears, “Anything is possible.” He was doing skin-to-skin contact, and his instinct as a father absolutely… changing diapers, burping, supporting me with nursing… I was just in awe of him. Totally in awe. He was really generous and selfless. And he was 24 when we had our first kid.
That has continued and he’s just a really engaged, devoted father. What we struggle with most is being like, “Seth, make sure that you have boundaries for yourself and you take time for yourself. You’re not just at the beck and call of the kids 24/7.” He’s a best friend to them. He’s a playmate to them. He’s an incredible role model. He’s a guide. He’s just… awesome. I’m so grateful to have the family that I do. Even when we live in a three bedroom house together, there’s a teenager and everyone’s going to school and working full time, it’s awesome. I’m enormously, enormously grateful for that. And so much of it has to do with how Seth parents, honestly.
FE: I love that all the pieces fell perfectly into place. You assembled quite a great group of celebrity fathers, like Will Smith and Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and more. So, how did you approach them about being involved? And did you already have aspects of their parenting that you wanted to pull out from them? Or was it a lot more organic than that?
BDH: Definitely organic. A lot of the comedians said, “People don’t ask us about this.” One father was like, “I have literally never talked that long, or had a conversation for that length of time, just about my children.” I was just struck by that because I was like, “Wow! That’s such a huge part of my life, talking about my family, talking about my children, and people asking me personal stuff.” Very respectfully, but like, “What does it take for you to balance and navigate being a mother and also being someone working in the entertainment industry?” And that’s not a question that’s asked of a lot of these guys and they’re navigating it just as much as I am, so that was really surprising to me. I learned a lot about parenting and what it takes to be a father and all of that.
I’m answering your question backwards, with these comedians, I had done a short series of little short documentary films over the years that Justin Wilkes, who’s the producer on this [Dads] and is president of Imagine Documentaries. Before, he worked at a company called Radical Media and I was hired by them several times to shoot these little documentaries about various subjects. I loved the Errol Morris style format of getting to have the subject look into the camera, directly into the lens ,when they’re talking. You use a contraption that Errol Morris really kind of was one of the inventors of, called the Interrotron, that allows you to interview people in a way that is particularly natural for everyone.
I had done a lot of documentaries using this interview style and kind of gathering a cast of characters, to – real people to talk about a similar subject. I did that for the 1960s and gathered all of these different individuals who were impacted and influential in the sixties. And I’ve done other things that way which is why I actually had my grandfather’s footage. In my mind, I was like, I would love to start with the comedians who I have met and been interviewed by over the years, you know? And that would probably be the easiest ask because they’ve invited me on their show and now I’m saying, “Hey, would you be a guest on my show?”
Conan was the first ask, and then Kimmel and Fallon… Will Smith in my mind was the extreme reach, like let’s just shoot for the moon. I asked him kind of more on the latter side, once there was a group of folks assembled, but he actually got back to us the fastest. He was really incredibly supportive and so generous. But all the guys got back to us very quickly and it was indicative of what I was saying. I think they were eager to share about something that was such a massive part of their lives, because kids are ad yet it hasn’t been acknowledged in the same way that oftentimes, not to make this a gender thing, but the mom.
Dads is available on Apple+
