Why The Half Of It's Leah Lewis Will Never Stop Growing Up

By Crystal Bell


Far less than a minute into our conversation, Leah Lewis tells me how she's been taking care of herself — "mentally and physically" — while quarantining in her Los Angeles residence. It's late April, and the typically benign question of "how are you doing?" Is currently a loaded phrase that insinuates, in essence, "how are you coping?" The 23-year-old star of The Half of It assures me she's been consuming food a lot (she and her boyfriend challenge each other to cook-offs in the kitchen), reading a lot (she's currently in the middle of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood), calling a lot (she talks to her best friend and co-star Alexxis Lemire at least "five times a day"), and painting her toenails a lot. She journals day-to-day, a hobby she’s kept for most of her life, although finds it especially cooperative amidst this drawn-out period of social distancing from companions and family.


It gives her a sense of routine and purpose, which she also maintains with a day-to-day residence workout plan. Booty Blast class on Saturdays. Arms and abs on Wednesdays. Whenever this whole thing started I was a little bit down on myself," she tells MTV News over the phone. The feeling is familiar, given several people mention quarantine has taken a toll on their mental health. Yet then, she says, "I began to look forward to doing something each and every day."


If only Ellie Chu could visualize the world through Lewis's eyes. In Alice Wu's The Half of It, Ellie doesn't have much to look forward to. She's intelligent and wildly witty, with a cunning entrepreneurial spirit (she's a writer for hire among her classmates), and however the high school senior has no plans to leave the rural town of Squahamish — no matter how much she hates it. She feels obligated to stay for her widowed Chinese father, who struggles to communicate with small-minded townspeople. Although also scared. She is a queer first-generation immigrant who's barely come out to herself. She's uncomfortable in her own skin. How is she supposed to exist in the world by herself as soon as she doesn't even know herself yet?


It's a feeling with which Lewis could connect, even in her twenties. "By being able to be Ellie Chu, I was able to begin to love the quieter parts of myself," she says. I'm currently working on self-love and learning about how to embrace the components of me, at 23, that maybe I'm not a large fan of. There's habitually room for growth because situations are usually changing around us. Things change and also you learn to adapt, and I think it's a really pretty thing."


Helping Ellie on her journey of self-discovery is Paul (Daniel Diemer), a dopey jock who also happens to be head over heels for the school's cool girl Aster Flores (Lemire). He convinces Ellie to join his scheme to "get the girl" without realizing that she's also hopelessly in love with Aster. Yet this isn't your usual love story. For starters, Ellie and Paul's unlikely friendship is the heart of the film, and as they become closer, it's easy to be able to see how Paul begins to misread the scenario. Although, The Half of It isn't concerned with who gets the girl.


"It's not about romance," Lewis says. "These characters are learning about how to love for the initial time. There literally is no rule book or guide on how to love. That is why this is a love story, because folks are figuring out what that demonstrates for themselves why as well as how to do it in a way that feels good for them and for others. Love doesn't habitually end with finding your other half, nevertheless your other half would be friendship. It can would be finding your way back to your family members. And also it can would be finding your own unique voice."


It's what made Wu's screenplay so relatable to her. Lewis has been nurturing her personalized perspective as an actor since 2006. As a child, trim perform scenes from her preference television shows and movies in her family's living room. She began booking commercial work and signed with a talent manager at 7 years old, routinely flying from Gotha, Florida, to Los Angeles with her mother. She admired to sing, also — and Disney was her muse. "I remember sitting my family member down and being like, 'OK, right now I'm going to act out a scene from Sleeping Beauty and you also guys are all going to watch me,'" she says with a laugh. She brought that same plucky energy to L.A. If she moved coasts several years prior, channeling that confidence into her audition for The Half of It. Nevertheless, it wasn't her boldness that landed her the part — that clashed with Wu's vision of the character; it was her willingness to dig deeper.


as soon as I first came in I thought I had Ellie inside the bag. I played her pretty and quirky, a little bit more like Lana Condor in To All of the Males I've Loved Before," she recalls. "She was a little bit more upbeat and aware of herself." Wu reeled her in. "Ellie is an observer, a wallflower. So Alice helped ground my efficiency. She encouraged me to be more present. She literally pulled a side out of me that I didn't even know existed. I was like, 'Dude, we shot a movie, and I'm brand new.'"


The method of working with Wu and playing Ellie, an outsider who's as estranged from herself as she is from her peers, led Lewis to think about her own coming-of-age experience and the depictions of youth and Asian identity she had grown up consuming. Case in point, it wasn't up until watching 2018's Netflix hit To All of the Men I've Loved Before that she saw a Asian-American teen be the "center of her own story." Right now, with Ellie Chu, she gets to highlight a much different experience of what it's like to grow up in smalltown America. "Alice showed me another side of what it's like to be a Asian American," she says. "It's the fact that this character isn't just the ideal friend and she's not just the smart girl who writes everyone's papers at school. This is a fully-fledged human being whose story needs to be told."


Still, the idea that you ever stop growing up is a short-sighted one. The relationship you have with yourself is a marathon, not a sprint. "I'm honestly going to be 90 and still figuring things out," Lewis jokes. Then, she pauses. "I've been really attempting to be gentle with myself any time it comes to my insecurities. I'm learning about how to be a higher class of friend to myself. I've Been focusing on doing things that make me happy.”


Things like journaling, calling her sister, reading, cooking (she recently made a breathtaking shrimp pasta), working out, and soaking up the sun in the little nook on her patio. This is how she stays present, focused, and ready for tomorrow. “I don't know what the future holds,” she concludes, “but I'm certainly living for today and just attempting to grow as much as possible in the moment."