Voicemails for Isabelle is the latest rom-com to hit Netflix, but it’s not strictly all romance and comedy. A large part of this film is dedicated to grief and the journey that comes when you lose a loved one. With my dad currently fighting Stage 4 cancer, it had me sobbing on my couch as I grieved in advance. Voicemails for Isabelle follows Jill (Zoey Deutch) as she deals with the death of her best friend and sister, Isabelle (Ciara Bravo). As a way of coping, Jill leaves countless voicemails for Isabelle, the new number assigned to Wes’ (Nick Robinson) work phone. When I sat down with the cast and writer-director, I wanted to delve into how this theme of grief really hit home. Deutch says when she read the script, she was instantly touched. “I think [writer-director] Leah [McKendrick] did a really beautiful job navigating a very intense subject, and everybody deals with grief differently, of course, but when I read it, I felt that it was… a really beautiful portrayal of what it feels like to love someone so much and lose them,” the actor says. “It’s the heart of the film, the sister love story.”
