Passionflix’s latest film, The Air He Breathes, based on the book by Brittainy Cherry, has been out for a week now, and we still can’t get over how good it was. The film was such a beautiful story that dealt with grief, and stars Kelcie Stranahan and Ryan Carnes, who play the leads Elizabeth and Tristan, did an incredible job of bringing such loved characters to life. We got the opportunity to attend the film’s premiere in Los Angeles and sit down with them to discuss the movie for an exclusive interview.
It’s no secret that this writer loves soap operas—especially General Hospital. At the start of our interview, I had to take my fangirl moment with Carnes because I’ve been watching him since he was in the show as Dr. Lucas Jones. We got into the interview after handling that vital business because it was indeed necessary. As I said, I write for a company with the word fangirl in it, so I couldn’t resist.
I had so many questions for Kelcie and Ryan about their roles in The Air He Breathes. One that was of interest to me was how each would decompress at the end of the day. Because The Air He Breathes is such an emotional film, it had to be quite taxing.
Ryan had this to say:
“For me, it wasn’t too different from what I oftentimes do to decompress at the end of the day. A lot of times, I just put on something on Netflix or Amazon. That helps me turn my brain off. Unfortunately, I don’t get a lot accomplished. I don’t get a lot of shows watched that way. But that’s kinda my go-to. It just helps me turn my brain off, get out of my head and my body starts to relax. Other times, I’ll read other things online. Nothing terribly exciting. Nothing headline-worthy.”
While it’s not a “headline-worthy” way to decompress after a long and emotional day, I am right there with Ryan because I, too, love to watch something on various streaming platforms. Like him, I go for what I know will help me turn my brain off. Because sometimes, you need to not think about anything.
Kelcie’s way of decompressing also works too.
“Personally, I talk to my mom every day, so every day after we shot, and when we were done with the day, I would just call her and just tell her about the day, and that’s how I get calmed down.”
Kelcie also talked about how nice it was to have Ryan along with her:
“These days were very intense but having Ryan and coming back at the end of the day we would chat together and say how we felt about the day and how we felt about the scenes. That helped a lot because it just felt like we were really there together going through all of this together.”
Having a costar you can talk to who is in the same boat as you is always helpful. It’s nice to know that Kelcie and Ryan were that support system for each other.
If you’ve read The Air He Breathes, you know it is a romantic drama with jaw-dropping twists. We had to know if Kelcie and Ryan had read Brittainy’s book beforehand and knew the twist or if they learned about it when they read the script.
Kelcie took on this question first:
“I hadn’t read Brittainy’s book beforehand, so when I read the script…it’s a beautiful script. I was like ‘I’ve gotta read the book now.’ I have to read the book… This is the first time I’ve read a script that came from a book so that’s so cool because there’s so much in the book and it helps to have that for this script and there’s so much in the book and it helps to have that for this script and there’s so much that isn’t always in the script that you get to get from both characters perspectives from the book so right after I got the script I read her book instantly and took me like two, three days to get through the whole thing. You can’t stop reading. It’s so emotional and it’s so funny. And I just had such a good time reading it.”
Like Kelcie, Ryan also dove right into Cherrys book:
“I had not read the book prior to reading the script. And I was reading the script and all of a sudden I was like ‘WHOA! WOW! I did not see that coming.’ I did not see that twist coming. And then all of it just took on this whole new tone which was cool because I love a small town drama. I love a good small town dramatic thriller. So having those elements come into place was really cool.”
Carnes went on to say, “I’m a very slow reader, so I didn’t actually read the book. I listened to the book, so as soon as I got the job and decided to do it, I went and started listening to the book.”
I loved learning that both of them read The Air He Breathes. And yes, listening to the audiobook counts. Not every actor does that when they’re cast in a book-to-screen adaptation. It’s not necessarily something that is required, but it’s nice when the actors use that readily available source material. It’s not often an actor gets that kind of background for a character, so why not take advantage and do the reading?
This was such an enjoyable interview. The time really flew by. Both Kelcie and Ryan gave some great answers and there are many more questions we had like how long it took to do those intricate tattoos and how well the dog who played Zeus behaved on set. You can get the answer to all of these questions by watching below:
The Air He Breathes is streaming now on Passionflix.
