Interview: Director Olivia Newman Talks Octopuses and ‘Bringing Remarkably Bright Creatures’ to Life on Netflix

Olivia Newman wanted Marcellus, the giant Pacific octopus at the heart of Remarkably Bright Creatures, to feel like just another character in the world of the film, as grounded and real as anyone else on screen. The solution, arrived at after ruling out trained octopuses and physical puppets, was CGI built from tens of hours of footage of a real octopus named Agnetha at the Vancouver Aquarium, with weighted stand-in props on set so that Sally Field and Lewis Pullman had something to hold and react to. Newman describes watching her imagine Marcellus into existence with almost nothing to work from as one of the most inspiring things she has witnessed on a set.

The Netflix film, which Newman directed and co-wrote with John Whittington, adapts Shelby Van Pelt‘s bestselling debut novel about a widow who forms an unlikely bond with an octopus and a wayward young man in a small coastal town. It is Newman’s second adaptation following Where the Crawdads Sing (2022). Awards Radar spoke with her about navigating the structural changes an adaptation requires, how she found the perfect location for Tova’s house, and what it has been like watching the film reach people all over the world on Netflix.

The film has been nominated for Outstanding Movie at the 2026 Emmy’s. Read our full conversation with director and co-writer Olivia Newman below.

Remarkably Bright Creatures draws on a source novel, as did Where the Crawdads Sing. This time you are both director and writer. How were those experiences similar and different?

Olivia Newman: Similar in that they both presented real challenges. Both of these books were difficult to adapt because structurally we needed to change things from the source material while trying to stay as true as we could to the characters and the heart of the stories. The biggest difference for me was that I was not a writer on Crawdads, so it was wonderful to work with a great writer like Lucy Alibar and to read drafts and give my notes. With this project I actually got to take the script and put my own words to the page. Having been through the adaptation process on Where the Crawdads Sing and also on The Last Thing He Told Me, the Apple TV+ series I was a pilot director and producing director on, I had really come to understand how adaptation from book to screen works. I was excited to finally get a chance to actually write on one.

What was the collaboration like between you, your co-writer, and Shelby Van Pelt herself?

Olivia Newman: John Whittington had written a draft of the script before I came on, and when I came on board I took it and went in a slightly different direction and started a new draft. But he had really taken the first stab at showing that this story could be told through these two people and that we could put Tova and Cameron together for the bulk of the movie, which is not how their story is told in the book. That was really exciting to see. Then I had some other ideas I wanted to try, so it was more like a relay race between us. And Shelby read every draft of the script. She gave notes but was also incredibly respectful and understanding that the movie was going to have to be its own medium. Her notes were always really helpful, especially when there was a scene from the book that she knew fans really loved that we had left out. She would say, you do not have to, but you might want to include this moment, or point out something like you rarely hear thunder in the Pacific Northwest. Things that were really useful. I feel like John showed us the way and Shelby was there to make sure we did not go too far adrift.

Can you talk about the pipeline and workflow for bringing Marcellus to life, from pre-production through to what the actors were actually doing on set and post-production?

Olivia Newman: From the very beginning, when I read the book and when I started writing, I really wanted Marcellus to feel like just another character in this world, as grounded as everybody else. As much as I wanted Tova and Cameron to feel like real people, I wanted Marcellus to feel like a real octopus living in that aquarium. The first thing I hoped was that we could shoot a real octopus at an aquarium and perhaps have it trained to do certain things. That idea was very quickly dispelled. So the question became, “How do we create an octopus in the most realistic way possible?” We explored puppets and CGI and came to the conclusion that he really needed to be CGI. But my request to our visual effects team was that we shoot a real octopus named Agnetha who lives at the Vancouver Aquarium and that I be able to use footage of her in the movie interchangeably with our CGI octopus. That set the bar for them: their octopus needed to look as real as Agnetha. The VFX team went out and shot tens of hours of footage of Agnetha moving all around her tank in different poses, different physicalities. And then they researched anything outside the tank, like an octopus going through a hole or walking on the ground, to find footage of real octopuses doing those movements. All of their CGI animation was based on real octopus movement. Scrutinizing their work to make sure it was as photoreal as possible was part of the process all the way through to the end, and they did an amazing job. On set, we had puppets made for lighting reference and for eyeline so we always had the right size and could show the actors exactly where Marcellus would be. We had weighted puppets so that when the actors had to lift him, it was weighted to the exact weight so that would feel realistic. But then of course we would always remove them for the actual shots, so the actors had a chance to practice with something and then nothing. I really cannot credit Sally enough for being able to imagine and see Marcellus when there was nothing there. Lewis often says that he would look at Sally and see what she was seeing, and that she really guided him as well. But both of them were just amazing at imagining this octopus from some direction about where he starts and where he moves, and once the camera is rolling it is really up to them.

You’ve worked with some amazing talent, but possibly none as legendary as Sally Field. What was it like working with her and collaborating on this character?

Olivia Newman: Sally is so inspiring, since I was a kid watching her in movies. This was definitely one of those moments where I never dreamed I could work with somebody of this caliber in my lifetime. Definitely a dream come true. What I admire so much about Sally is that even with all of her accolades and her long career, she is still doing the work because she loves the work. At the end of the day she is an actor who has a job and she is so passionate about it. That is inspiring to everybody on set, to come prepared and to have thought through every detail of her character. Her memory is incredible, she hardly ever missed a line, and her improvisational skills are amazing. So much of the comedy came from lines that were ad-libbed and thrown in, a lot of playing. It was really inspiring for all of us. And certainly intimidating at moments. She is a force to be reckoned with.

How and when did you know Lewis Pullman was the right fit opposite her?

Olivia Newman: We read a few actors with Sally, and honestly the minute Lewis started reading with her, I cannot even say reading, they just got in a room together and started to play. They did the scene where Marcellus is out of the tank and Tova catches him trying to get back in, with a broom. They were imagining him all over the room, standing on chairs, just playing. Lewis jumped right in with her. All of our jaws just dropped. We could see the relationship so clearly. His ability to go toe to toe with Sally is really something.

I wanted to ask about the world building and production design, the aquarium, Tova’s house, the small town atmosphere. How did all of that come together?

Olivia Newman: It was really important to us that everything, just like the octopus, feel grounded in a real sense of place. That is always important to me. On Where the Crawdads Sing we built a house in a swamp because I wanted the actors to have the outside and inside accessible. For this, finding Tova’s house, we did not want to shoot a green screen of water, but it had to be a house that overlooked water. The water plays such an important role in this story. It is where she lost her son, a constant reminder of the question that hangs over her. I really wanted to find a house on the side of a hill that overlooked water. We happened upon it while I was in the scout van. I was looking out the window as we drove down a road of houses on a hillside and I saw the roof of this house and said stop the van. I ran out, looked down the hill, and there was Tova’s house. It just looked exactly like her house. Unfortunately it was for sale and we were not shooting for six months. So for six months I just prayed it would not sell. Our location manager did not want to bother the owner until we were very close to shooting because we did not want to scare her away. Luckily the house did not sell, and three weeks before we started shooting the owner finally let us in and we got it. It was an impossible space to shoot. There was nowhere to put lights. It was on a hill so lighting from outside was a nightmare. My DP actually got a splinter in her eyeball from all the wood in the house. It was not easy, but we were all on the same page that it was better to shoot in a real location and feel the space. To get that feeling of a house that might have been built by somebody’s father and expanded and expanded over the years, which was exactly the story of that house, it started as a log cabin and just kept growing. Our production designer Jennifer Morden is an absolute genius. Everything she puts in her sets has character thought behind it. Family photos, newspaper printouts from the right time period, every detail considered. When it came to the aquarium, she had to build an actual aquarium. I really wanted there to be live animals. I did not want to shoot screens of playback footage of fish, which would have been much cheaper, but I did not want that kind of artifice. She found a guy who builds aquariums, hired him to help us build our own, and got eels and seahorses and figured out how to keep them alive and healthy. We could not shoot that many scenes at an actual aquarium because we would not be able to light it the way we wanted, we would not have the space to move cameras around, the noise is not film-friendly, and you can only shoot overnight. We could not ask our actors to do ten days of overnights. So we had to build our own. It was just an incredible feat from our production designer. Most of the animals, if I am not mistaken, were donated to the Vancouver Aquarium when we were done. We did shoot one night at the Vancouver Aquarium for some of the bigger tanks, the shark tanks and the jellyfish, and we constructed our planning around how those spaces fit together with our built aquarium so we could orient ourselves.

The film has been on Netflix for a few months now. What has it been like letting it go out into the world?

Olivia Newman: What is amazing about doing this through Netflix is that people all over the world are seeing it at the same time. I have been getting such beautiful messages in my DMs from all corners of the world, people connecting to this odd little story about an old lady and an octopus and a wayward young man. It is amazing to see how it reaches people across culture and gender and age and country. That part has been really something to witness. And then you get the stats from Netflix about which countries it is number one in, and it is never the ones you expect. It has been absolutely wild, and I am just thrilled that it is touching people and reaching so many.