‘Love Life’ Executive Producer Weighs In On Little Darby’s Decision In Flashback Episode

The executive producer of Anna Kendrick’s Love Life is weighing in on the decisions made in the recently released flashback episode, according to a report from TheWrap.

The HBO Max series follows Kendrick’s character, Darby Carter, as she navigates life, career, friends, and different relationships with men. Each episode focuses on a significant romantic relationship and how it shaped Darby’s outlook on love and the way she sees herself. During the fifth episode, the show takes viewers back in time to Darby’s first real experience with dating. While attending boarding school, she met and fell in love with a boy named Luke Ducharme. The pair’s relationship was short-lived but it ended up having a major impact on the rest of her life because of the way things fell apart.

After Luke hooked up with her roommate, Darby decided to lie about having cancer, and news of her imaginary illness quickly moved through the entire school. The school’s administration eventually realized the cancer wasn’t real and called her parents to remove her from school grounds. As Darby left the campus for good, she saw Luke one last time.

While talking about teen Darby’s choices, the show’s executive producer, Paul Feig, said it was “really, really bad.”

“She makes this really, really bad decision, but you kind of understand it at the same time and just watching it get worse and worse and worse as she digs herself in deeper,” Feig said. “But what is more of a 15-year-old thing to do than make a terrible mistake and just ride it all the way down into the ground?”

During the flashback moments of the episode, Courtney Grosbeck played the role of teen Darby. Feig said it was super tricky to cast the younger version of Kendrick but that he felt they lucked out.

“They have to have the soul and that kind of emotional connection to the character and be a great actress,” he explained. “And that young lady we hired, her facial expressions just killed me. Just those looks, you can read what’s going on in her head.”

Darby’s blast from the past was inspired by a visit to her new therapist, who asked about her first experience with rejection. In Episode 6, she reconnected with Luke via Facebook and ended sleeping with him despite still being married to Magnus, played by Nick Thune. By the end of the episode, she was finally able to ask her husband for a divorce. Magnus quickly threatened to kill himself, but Darby remained firm in her decision.

The final four episodes of the series will be released next Thursday on HBO Max.