Company was a big thing for us. Adam and I had already been talking about it for a few years, and we brought Scarlett into that. We’d talked about how much we both liked it and were wondering how you would make a movie of it, if that was even possible. It became another example of how character helps inform story. On the one hand I just liked the idea of Adam singing “Being Alive,” but Charlie was also an artist who I felt would be more expressive through art, through something that he loved that wasn’t his words. He’d be singing because he knows it and loves it, but at the same time it would provide an opportunity for a kind of internal connection, some change in his character. It could work like a song in a musical, where the character starts out in one place and is somewhere else when it finishes.

I liked the idea that Nicole would also be singing from Company, and how that becomes a point of connection for them even though they aren’t present for each other’s renditions. It’s an invisible conversation that’s still going on between them, and it’s also history. You can guess that she grew up singing Sondheim with her mom and her sister. They have the dance moves down, they’re entertaining their friends, and we can imagine they’ve done it before. We can also imagine that it was a point of bonding for Charlie and Nicole when they first met.