Parker Young: Image of You Role "Terrified" Me
Parker Young breaks down why the Image of You screenplay scared him -- and why he didn't finish the book.
In The Image of You, Parker Young (Enlisted) plays a handsome stock trader who finds a storybook romance...only to find out that his new girlfriend has a twin sister set on exposing him as a fraud. The twisting, turning narrative left Young intimidated and "terrified" after he read the script and saw what kind of role he was going to have to take on. Bristling at the term "method actor," he nevertheless tried to put himself in his character's shoes as much as possible, leaving his wife and daughter for a while before principal photography launched to isolate himself and get into the frazzled, damaged headspace he needed.
"I've never been more terrified than I was when I signed onto this project," Young told ComicBook. "I'm looking at it on the page, and I see where this arc is heading and what this character is about to go through, and he's completely broken. Things that he goes through are things that I, thank God, have never had to deal with in my personal life. The challenge for me was just trying to feel like I had done whatever I could to be as ready as possible for those moments, and there's no blueprint for that."
There actually was a blueprint for his character -- Parks's bestselling novel -- but ironically, Young says he never finished it. That's because it became clear pretty early on that there would be significant departures from the source material in the script -- and it was more important to keep his mind clear for what the script needed. His compromise? He picked Parks's brain directly.
"I had every intention to read the book, and I started to, and there were a lot of similarities, but then the adaptation ends up being very different, specifically the end, than the book," Young admitted. "I didn't want to get too caught up in the weeds of the original storyline, I just wanted to focus on the story that we were actually telling in the movie. At a certain point, I put the book aside. We were privileged enough to have Adele Parks, the author of the book, on set and I spent a lot of time with her, trying to understand how she envisioned this character."
What is The Image of You about?
Here's how the studio's official synopsis puts it:
Sasha Pieterse (PRETTY LITTLE LIARS), Parker Young (IMPOSTERS), Nestor Carbonell (THE DARK KNIGHT RISES), and Academy Award® winner Mira Sorvino (MIGHTY APHRODITE) star in this twisted tale of deception and desire based on the bestselling thriller by Adele Parks. Identical twins Anna and Zoe find their bond tested over Anna's new love, Nick. While the trusting Anna is head over heels, her skeptical sister Zoe senses a web of deceit. But as Zoe digs for the truth, they're all pulled into a dangerous game where honesty could prove fatal.
The Image of You is available to buy or rent on Video on Demand platforms.
