Jay Ellis, John Krasinski. Getty Images (2)
Jay Ellis commented on John Krasinski writing and directing a movie about imaginary friends the same year he’s releasing a memoir titled Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)?: Adventures in Boyhood.
“Krasinski tried to copy me! John, I know you’re gonna read this, stop it! Call me, and we can collaborate next time,” Ellis, 42, joked about Krasinski’s film IF while speaking exclusively with Us Weekly at MPTF’s NextGen Annual Summer Party in Los Angeles on Sunday, June 23.
Quips aside, Ellis said he’s “super excited [that] this is the imaginary friends summer.” He pointed out that the horror movie Imaginary, which features a dark entity lurking inside a child’s teddy bear, and the Pixar film Inside Out 2, which follows an ensemble of characters that represent one teenage girl’s emotions, also came out this year.
“This is just an imaginary — a very creative — play-filled summer,” the Insecure alum said. “I’m excited about it.”
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Ellis’ memoir is out Tuesday, July 30, and is based on his childhood imaginary friend.
“It’s a collection of short stories that thematically all go together, but it’s this wild, adventurous childhood that I grew up with and this imaginary friend who helped me through it,” he explained. “And really, it’s a love letter to the ’90s, it’s a love letter to my family because I bounced around and spent summers in different places. So, [it’s for] all the people who raised me, my friends. A love letter to all the cities that I lived in, my dad was in the Air Force so I moved around a lot.”
Ellis shared that writing the book got him back to thinking about “imagination, creativity and play, and how we all need it as adults” in one form or another.
“It’s healthy and it’s, for me, what makes me tick as a performer,” the Top Gun: Maverick actor said.
Krasinski, 44, meanwhile, previously said he started writing IF, which hit theaters in May, after noticing that his two daughters stopped playing make-believe games amid the stress of the coronavirus pandemic.
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“It was actually the pandemic that really got me thinking about the movie because their light started to go out, and they started playing fewer and fewer imaginary games,” he said during a June appearance on the “Pop Culture Moms” podcast. “They were asking big questions about, ‘Are we going to be OK?’ And I thought, that’s the definition of growing up, and that choice about whether you stay a kid or grow up doesn’t have to be made here. So, I wrote a movie about how that magical world … it will always be there for you.”
Krasinski shares daughters Hazel, 10, and Violet, 8, with wife Emily Blunt. Ellis, for his part, shares daughter Nora, 4, with wife Nina Seničar.
With reporting by Patrick Stinson