’56 Days’: How Team of Women Directors Made Things ‘Easier’ on Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia | Video

“56 Days” is now streaming on Prime Video, and with its eight episodes, it accomplishes a rare feat in Hollywood — it is entirely directed by women. And, according to series stars Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia, that made things both “easier” and more comfortable for them.

Based on Catherine Ryan Howard’s book of the same name, “56 Days” tells the love story of Ciara (Cameron) and Oliver (Jogia). The two meet as newbies to Boston, and quickly find themselves enamored with each other. But, 56 days later, a dead body is found in one of their apartments, and the question is, who killed who? Alethea Jones, Shana Stein and Lauren Wolstein split directing duties on the show, each handling multiple episodes.

The early episodes establish that Ciara and Oliver have almost a magnetic pull to each other, and things get hot and heavy very fast. According to Cameron, those scenes are where the impact of having all women at the helm was immediately felt.

“It was very helpful for me when it came to the intimacy scenes, because everybody was just so on our side, everybody was so helpful, so kind, so protective,” she explained to TheWrap.

Jogia proudly noted that he’s been almost entirely hired and directed by women in his career, and readily agreed with Cameron, saying that the women’s investment in the actors’ comfort on this series “made it easier to do.”

But for Cameron, it also added an extra layer of precision to her character. No major spoilers here, but we’ll note that Ciara is a character who isn’t totally who she says she is, and has certain motives behind striking up a relationship with Oliver.

“Ciara could be this kind of manic pixie dream girl that’s gone off the rails if it was in someone else’s hands, who didn’t really see her as a sort of a — I hate this,” Cameron said.

“A person?” Jogia supplied.

“Yes, a person. Thank you, because I was gonna say complex, and I hate it when people use that word to define female characters,” Cameron returned. “But, you know, she’s a wholly formed person.”

“There’s some gaps in her personality that she has sort of filled in with things that I think she needed to survive, that she ascertained and gathered from the world on her own, when she was sort of neglected as a glass child, because everything was going wrong in the family, but a true, fully formed person, and not for his consumption, right? Which is what the role so easily could have been.”

“56 Days” is now streaming on Prime Video.

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