If you thought your romance life was tricky, you should take a look at the newest indie film, “Banana Split.”
Banana Split takes you through the breakup of April (Hannah Marks) and Nick’s (Dylan Sprouse) high school relationship as they part ways for college. Shortly after the breakup, April’s post-breakup stalking skills lead her to find Clara, Nick’s new girlfriend.
Now, you’d think the plot would involve an intense rivalry among the two, right? Over-dramatic scenes sabotaging each others’ chances with Nick, pouring hair dye into each others shampoo, probably a scene with a food fight somewhere. Wrong.
Clara and April meet at a party one night and instantly become best friends. Knowing their circumstances could get very messy, they decide to stay best friends in secret from Nick. This insanely close, genuine, and heartwarming friendship is awesome to watch on screen and makes you want to text your BFF love letters while watching it. Through the movie, jealousy and anger sneak their way into this friendship and test April and Clara like never before.
We got to speak to the cast on the day of the premiere for Banana Split. Dylan Sprouse, Liana Liberato, and Hannah Marks share their thoughts on the movie and favorite moments while filming on set.
The Knockturnal: What attracted you to this project?
Dylan Sprouse (Nick): Here’s the thing, comedy is not easy. And when you read a lot of scripts, you realize how not easy it is because a lot of the scripts are dog sh*t. So when there is a good script, and it is funny on the page, it stands out. This script stood out.
Liana Liberato (Clara): I’ve known Hannah for a long time and she wrote the script a really long time ago. So I had known of the script for a while and I’ve always loved Clara as a character. I remember reading the first draft all the way to the last draft which I feel is so rare to come across as an artist. You never see the process of how a script grows. You just receive the script and that’s what it is, that’s what you’re doing. It was cool to see Hannah as a writer grow throughout the years and that’s definitely something that attracted me.
The Knockturnal: In the movie, April has these really hilarious scenes at the dinner table with her Mom and sister. How did you guys go about filming those?
Hannah Marks (April) (Writer): It was mostly scripted, but thankfully Addison Riecke, who plays my little sister, is so talented and so sharp. I remember one take, it didn’t make it in the movie because it was very dirty, but she said “It’s 2018 mom, everybody sucks dick.” That was improv. We shot it at the end of 2017, and she was so smart that she knew to adjust the year for the potential release. She’s that quick and she was only 12, so we got really lucky. She was the only person we auditioned, I couldn’t imagine anyone else trying to say those parts at such a young age.
The Knockturnal: “How were April and Clara able to develop such a deep connection on and off screen?”
Hannah Marks (April) (Writer): I’ve known her for over a decade and I think we got along spectacularly during the shoot. I was kind of expecting us to end up bickering and we never did.
Liana Liberato (Clara): It’s so cool because I think sometimes when you do friendship movies, you kind of have to go out of your way to bond with someone and you never know what the boundaries are for the other person. Like when we’re on set, I know Hannah’s thought process and she knows mine. It’s nice to know if in the middle of a scene if I wanna mess with her hair, or push her, or grab her boob it’s just not a problem.
Hannah Marks (April) (Writer): There was a time during rehearsal where we had to do the scene in the bathroom, and she touches my boob. Hannah and I have this problem where we start to talk about one thing and then we’ll go off on a million different tangents, and we didn’t realize that she still had her hand on my boob as we were talking about something completely different. Like we were alone, in my apartment, with her hand on my boob.
The Knockturnal: Do you think there’s something special about your first love?
Dylan Sprouse (Nick): Yeah, and I think just young love like that is also very important. It’s where you’re understanding your boundaries with relationships, probably for the rest of your life. It’s forming how you act in those and how you are going to grow and you see that with the characters in the movie.You see that with Nick, you see him kind of try to run away from his feelings and his ex, and at the same time dive into this new relationship and then realize that’s maybe not what he wants.
Hannah Marks (April) (Writer): You have to find out who you are as a person without the relationship.
The Knockturnal: Favorite memories on set?
Dylan Sprouse (Nick): Well, we were talking about how there was a hobo who died inside of a Mexican food place we were all eating at.
Hannah Marks (April) (Writer): I wouldn’t say that was fun, but it was definitely a memory.
Dylan Sprouse (Nick): The craziest part though, is they didn’t even give us free nachos.
Liana Liberato (Clara): We were at the end of filming and we wanted to celebrate and go to dinner. Then this dude is for sure dead in the bathroom, and they rolled the body out in front of us.
Dylan Sprouse (Nick): We were like “um should we go?”, and they were like, “Well we’ll make sure you pay fully for it first.”
Hannah Marks (April) (Writer): Dylan also threw a dead seagull at me on the beach.
Dylan Sprouse (Nick): I did, it was dead.
