Sophia Soto
While fans might recognize Lili Reinhart for her role on The CW’s Riverdale, she gets to truly shine in Cooper Raiff’s Hal & Harper. The limited series revolves around the closeness of two siblings and how their lives have been intertwined — for better or worse — since childhood. Audiences will follow both Hal and Harper’s emotional journeys while they reexamine their past and reckon with the adults they have become.
“The whole show is characters learning how to give themself grace. You’re watching Harper over the course of eight episodes, although she’s doing something bad, which is cheating on her partner, unfortunately, she’s discovering who she is through that,” the star and executive producer explained. “I just have to give it up to Cooper’s writing. I think Hal & Harper is exactly the type of project that I’ve always been drawn to. I’ve always been drawn to something that feels like a slice of life and real human experiences. I get really frustrated when I read a script that I know I have to do a lot of work mentally to make the words on the page actually feel like they are organically going to come out of my mouth, because that’s just the nature of a lot of things. The way that things are written right now is to grab people’s attention while they’re on their phones at the same time.”
She continued to express, “There’s a lot of silence in Hal & Harper, and a lot of flashbacks and a lot of emotions that are played through. You blink, and you miss kind of a plot point, and I think that’s just not how most people are making film and television these days. But it’s my favorite type of filmmaking and so, yeah, I mean, I’m just forever honored and happy to be talking about it.”
At the center of their shared trauma is the loss of their mother, who died when they were only two and four years old, with Harper being the older sibling. One of the more notable aspects is the fact that Reinhart and Raiff also play the elementary school-aged version of their characters.
In the present day, we see their father, portrayed by Mark Ruffalo, getting ready to have a baby with his girlfriend (Betty Gilpin). Between this news and the fact that their childhood house is now on the market, the stage is set for a beautiful exploration of family, identity, and how the wounds of a complicated upbringing don’t always fade away with time.
“It’s interesting to start a show with the character expressing how she feels about herself very outright. I think I feel a lot of times you watch a character’s journey into discovering who they are, which you also are seeing that with Harper, but usually, you’re watching a character have a whole arc and then at the end of the arc, they get to vocalize how they feel about themselves, and it’s sort of a climactic moment. I don’t really think Harper saying that she thinks she’s a bad person is a super climactic moment in the context of the show. It’s just sort of a really quick glimpse into where she is in her life, and it kind of is the starting point of her journey, which is really interesting. It doesn’t follow sort of a traditional narrative in that sense,” Reinhart shared.
Watch Awards Radar’s full video interview with the actress below, where we talk about Harper’s arc, how television has evolved, the importance of the younger flashbacks, how the show handles grief, and more.
All episodes of Hal & Harper are now streaming on Mubi.
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