The Story Behind 'Find Me Falling'

An interview with Stelana Kliris, the screenwriter and director for the new romantic comedy starring Harry Connick Jr. as a washed-up rock star.

When Harry Connick Jr. met Agni Scott. (Photo: Pavlos Vrionides/Netflix.)

Harry Connick Jr. is having a midlife crisis — in the movies, at least.

The Grammy-winning jazz musician and actor headlines the romantic comedy Find Me Falling, which hits Netflix today, and his performance as a broody, weathered rock star past his prime gives a whiff of Jackson Maine, but far less tortured. His character, John Allman, is world-famous for the upbeat love song “Girl on the Beach.” His exes include Cameron Diaz, Tyra Banks and a bevy of supermodels. His dusty nostalgia act is growing tiresome. On a whim, John escapes to the Mediterranean isle of Cyprus, where he buys a quaint, cliffside home not knowing that it’s the site of a local “suicide hotspot,” an edgy plot twist that often gives the movie a hint of 1990s indie cinema. While visiting town, he reconnects with Sia (the magnetic Agni Scott), a former lover from his pre-fame youth. She’s now a doctor and hiding a pretty big secret. I won’t spoil it for you, all’s well that ends well. And the icing on the cake is the velvety-voiced Connick Jr. crooning in both English and Greek. (Try that, Meryl Streep!)

Find Me Falling, originally titled The Islander, was filmed in Cyprus two years ago, employing crew and supporting cast from the region. This morning, I spoke with the movie’s director and screenwriter, Stelana Kliris, about her journey making the island’s first high-profile romance — and persuading Connick Jr., an erstwhile genre fixture (see: Hope Floats, New in Town), to come along for the ride. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.

First of all, congratulations!!!

It is completely surreal for me. I'm South African, so a little-girl-from-South-Africa-now-living-in-Cyprus-who-now-has-a movie-on-Netflix is beyond my wildest imagination.

I love to see a woman behind the lens.

It is nice that [I’m] a female director. It should always be the best person for the job. But most of, if not all, the major rom-coms that have come out this year have been directed by men. And sometimes it really shows. You would think that at least in this genre, they would trust female filmmakers to take the helm.

Stelana Kliris.

What inspired you to write Find Me Falling?

This story came from an article that I read about a place in Sydney — I think it was called The Gap, a similar suicide hotspot, where this very kind man lived and saved many lives by inviting people in for tea. And I just thought to myself, What if some really curmudgeonly, grumpy old man or a misanthrope lived in the spot? What did that look like? And slowly the character of John Allman, this rock star in crisis, came up and because I wanted to shoot the whole thing in Cyprus and give it that wonderful sort of local flavor, I knew that the only way to get it out to the world was to have a really strong leading man: Enter the magic of Harry Connick Jr.

How did you end up casting Harry?

We reached out to him. He loved the script. I wrote him a really personal letter just to kind of appease any worries about coming to a place that probably he and his team had never heard of. Most people don't even know that Cyprus exists, or most people think it's a Greek island or that it is Greece. They constantly keep referring it to it as Greece. It's its own little island country. And I just told him, “We're a family here. It's a very intimate filmmaking experience, and you can just focus on your craft and telling the story and you're going to love it.” And he has said it was the best production experience of his life, which is a huge compliment to me and my team because the people there are really doing it because they love and care about the work. It's not massive paydays, it's not massive glory. We just really love making films, and it's so nice now to be able to reward the team by giving them a global audience to see their work. But yes: Harry said yes, and that was the big key to getting the whole film greenlit and financed.

Harry Connick Jr. and Ali Fumiko Whitney in a scene from Find Me Falling.

That’s terrific — even now, when romance films do big business in streaming, it remains a challenge to persuade male actors to star in one.

Harry was a dream to work with — very generous, accessible, and the loveliest human. I don't say this for PR purposes. He’s become just the dearest friend and he's a real artist. He has nothing to prove. He does things because he loves to do them, and he shows up and he's brilliant. He had this thing: He said his father taught him to always be on time and always be nice to people. And that was it. He would arrive on set every day, prepared, professional, lovely, funny, so nice to the whole crew.

He's the polar opposite of John in that he's had this wonderful, successful marriage for 30 years and three beautiful daughters. He's got this great balance. He was not led astray in his life, but he certainly understands the world of [pop stardom]. And he was able to give such great insight and input into what that would look like. And also just on a practical level, he was able to contribute so many things. He personally sourced the guitar that he used in the film and had the “JA” initials put in for John Allman.

He was really into the character, and we discussed what he would look like, what tattoos he [would have]. Because those are obviously fake tattoos.

At first, I was skeptical about his ability to pull off a rugged rocker vibe. But he does and does it well. He looks hot!

We let the beard grow out. Because he was supposed to be kind of in a bad place. We had the screening in New York the other day, and [I told him], “You’re Benjamin Button-ing.” Harry’s aging like fine wine. He’s looking better and better with every day.

When you meet Harry, you realize why some people are stars. There's a certain level of charisma that you just cannot explain, and you don't see in everybody, and that comes out on screen. But he has a lot of depth to him, and like I said, it's not just a job. He's not just there to deliver his lines and go. He cares. He contributes, he questions the lines, we discuss the scenes, we workshop the dialogue.

I don't know if a lot of people know this, but he's hilarious. And he would come on set and just have us laughing all day. He teases a lot. He picked a lot on me, a lot on [his costar] Ali [Fumiko Whitney]. And it just creates a really good atmosphere, and it ups everybody's game. I think there's just a nice chain reaction from having someone like Harry on set. He takes direction. Well, it was a very empowering experience for me. He's very supportive of women. Obviously, he's been surrounded by strong women his whole life — his family, his manager. It was super-empowering to have somebody just put all his trust in me. Whatever I said, he went for, and he did.

He wrote two songs for the film, including the lovely “Find Me Falling,” and serenades Agni Scott with a traditional Greek song in a scene that was so gorgeous, my heart exploded — well, not literally!

That's my favorite scene in the film. It's very, very precious to me. I love it. We deliberately took away the subtitles from [the serenade] just because we didn't want people to get lost in reading the lines — we wanted them just to feel the scene. It’s very simple. It's literally saying, I love you. I love the whole world because you're in it. Open the windows so I can see your face. And it's a serenade calling for somebody to open the windows so that you can sing to them. And they just did such a beautiful job of it. And there's a lovely little insider story on that with Agni. Her own husband [Scott Handy] used to be a pop star — he's an actor now — and had surprised her at their wedding reception by serenading her with that exact same song.

WHAT.

When she read the script for the film and got to that scene, she was like, “This is fate. This movie is for me.” She got him to dig out their wedding DVD, which they had never watched in all these years, and she played me the video. She said, “It's the same song. Very special.”

Do you have a personal connection to the island setting?

Both my parents are from Cyprus. My dad was an immigrant to South Africa. My mom was a refugee during the war in ’74 in Cyprus. But I grew up born and raised in South Africa, and I've been living in Cyprus since 2010. I’d bounced around. I was in London for a while. I was in Athens for seven years. I'm familiar with the [Cypriot] culture and the language, but I still had that fish-out-of-water experience. When I moved to Cyprus, I was still a little bit of a foreigner or an outsider, which was perfect for me because I can understand both perspectives when writing a film like this and having the local characters and the foreign character. And I have really fallen in love with it. I mean, it's a very quirky place. It really is like a big village. And there's some things that are very specific to living in a place like that where really everybody knows everybody, and it still has a very great sense of humanity because it's so small. I definitely have maybe a rose-colored view on things. It has its problems that it faces.

Kliris filming 2014’s Committed in Cyprus.

You previously wrote and directed a rom-com there called Committed about a chance encounter between a runaway bride and a guy under pressure to propose to his girlfriend. What is your attraction to love stories?

I love the idea of love. It doesn't necessarily have to be romantic love. It can be family, it can be friends, and also the idea of the love of your dreams. Those are two big themes in my films: of pursuing and making a life for yourself and following your dreams and having to sacrifice for your obligations or your family.

As a small side note, Committed was very much about that. I was terminally single my whole life. And then after making [that movie], I met the lead actor's brother, who is now my husband, at the premiere 10 years ago. It's very much art imitating life, which I love. And maybe I see things through rose-colored glasses, or I just want to put something out there that can be a bit of an escape for us or can be a little aspirational. … I guess it wasn't your classic boy-meets-girl rom-com. It was something a little different. I tried to play a little bit with the formula.

[With Find Me Falling], I was thinking about legacy and what we leave behind. I was also trying to have a baby at the time, and I was trying to get my movies made, and I heard something along the lines [of], “What you leave behind is not in your art or your children, but rather than the way that you treat people.” And that's become a little bit of a mantra of mine. And that was kind of the idea I wanted to express because [John] was this huge rock star and despite all the fame and fortune, he hadn't really invested in his personal life or his relationships or his friendships, and he was in this moment of crisis.

You now have a 4-year-old daughter. Men are rarely, if ever, asked this question. But as a mother of a small child myself, I’m curious: How do you balance motherhood with your demanding creative work and Cyprus-based production company?

I think it's an important question because that was the biggest challenge of all, and I ask it every day. I ask everybody the same question. My daughter was two when we started filming. We were all just getting out of the pandemic. We shot this in 2022. It's not a magical answer — it’s [having] support. My husband, Alex, took a step back from his work and looked after her and our parents, [who] also pitched in but had various health issues throughout the process. He really had to hold down the fort so that I would have the freedom to be able to do this. But it was still a constant balance. It was my first time being away from her.

After coming home from a 12- or 14-hour shoot, I would sit in the car and go through my shot list for the next day because I knew that the second I walked into our apartment, that then my time is hers and I wouldn't be able to do any more work. So, I would be sitting in my tiny little cramped car, going through my shots for the next day and getting prepared and just getting all my notes and then be done, and then go upstairs and do some time with my daughter. But that was very, very hard. Hard, but also a big motivator. I don't know about you, but since becoming a mom, aside from wanting to be a good role model, you also want to now give them the best quality of life. You really want to provide and work and create work and keep going.

---

Hi friends! Thanks for reading. A programming note: In last week’s edition, I mentioned that I’d publish this newsletter every two weeks. Sometimes I will break from schedule and send out a timely interview like this one. If you’d like to read more like it, LMK! I love to hear from you. My tip line is open at erincarlson09@gmail.com.

Last but not least, a pic of me (on the left) with pals Jennifer Armstrong and Pauline Millard cosplaying When Harry Met Sally at the newly reopened Central Park Boathouse earlier this month. If you go, you must try the gulf shrimp cocktail. And the eggs benedict! And perhaps a Boathouse Martini. The classics, baby.

I hope you have a nice weekend!

Warmly,

Erin