Steve Zahn and Daughter Audrey Bring Their Real-Life Bond to the Screen in ‘She Dances’

She Dances, a new film starring Steve Zahn and his daughter, Audrey Zahn, offers an intimate look at the relationship between a father and his teenage daughter, a competitive dancer. On March 17, at the Good Housekeeping headquarters in New York City, GH editor in chief Elspeth Velten sat down with Audrey and Steve—who co-wrote the film with his creative partner Rick Gomez—ahead of its release to explore how their real-life family dynamics shaped their onscreen roles.

Good Housekeeping: Audrey, this is your first feature film and that's such a momentous occasion, but I imagine that it's even more momentous for you to be sharing the stage with your father. I'd love to jump in by hearing a little bit about what that was like for you.

Audrey Zahn: Yeah, I mean it was super, super new for me because before this I was really just doing theater and dance. So I was really unfamiliar with film in general. But I'm happy that I got the chance to do it with people that I could trust and that really cared about me, that I knew were not going to make me look stupid or anything. So I felt very comfortable. And everybody's always like, "Did you feel intimidated working with your dad?" But I didn't really feel that way at all. It was just fun. We were doing our thing and now watching it back, I'm super, super proud and I'm super proud of my dad, too.

Steve Zahn and his daughter Audrey play father and daughter Jason and Claire in She Dances.

GH: Yeah. I mean, you two were playing a very natural role for both of you. You're playing a father and a daughter. I'm curious to hear more about what were some of the real-life parallels that came out on stage for you both?

Audrey: Oh my god. I mean, I remember when we were shooting, like sometimes he would annoy me like a dad usually does, where I'd be like, "Dad, you're not saying the right line. Like, you're really talking over me right now." But I guess what really translated well was our comfort with each other, because we do really love each other. We're actually very tight, very close. I FaceTime him every day and send him all my auditions and I'm like, "Hey, is this good? Can you choose one?" because I can't choose one. So, he's been my rock forever. But, yeah, translated on film, it was just kind of beautiful to see us transform into different people and have a different relationship that grows throughout the movie. It was really beautiful to see.

GH: Was it hard to act like there was a separation between you two?

Audrey: No. It's funny because I think because we're so close, it was kind of easier because there was no weirdness about it since we know that we're buddies. So, it was comfortable. It was kind of fun if anything to kind of play around with our relationship and see what happens.

GH: I'm curious about the creative process between you two and any sort of advice that you've taken from your dad over the years or things that you've learned from watching his career, or also any feedback that your dad has given you and what has it been like to receive that type of feedback from your father?

Audrey: Yeah. Well, I mean, for this film in particular, my dad and I spent about a month reading the script every day. We rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed, which is not very common for film at all. I was so used to rehearsing because I was doing theater and we rehearsed constantly. But for this, we just decided that that's what we were going to do. And even when Kenzie [Ziegler] came to film, she came two weeks early to learn the dances with me, but also rehearse all the lines with me, too, which never happens. So, that was really great. And as far as my dad giving me advice, he always was saying, "Over prepare, don't be a dick, and show up early." And that's kind of true.

GH: You definitely accomplished showing up early today.

Audrey: Um, just kidding. No, but that kind of goes for any job really. But also just being cool and being open and being real. And my dad taught me everything I know. Oh, here he is.

Steve joins the conversation on stage after being held up in NYC traffic.

GH: Hey, you made it. Your mic's right there.

Steve Zahn: That took forever.

GH: We told everyone that you joined the St. Paddy's Day parade to make it here. So, it's great to…

Steve: No. And then there's a major fire on Madison and 44th. So, it's like the perfect storm.

GH: Literally, everyone is against you. But here you are. And Audrey was just saying that one of your biggest pieces of advice for her is to always be on time.

Steve: No, be early.

Audrey: Be early. Yes. Exactly. We're kind of psychotic in the Zahn family.

Steve: I know. We show up way too early because mom…

Audrey: Because mom will freak out on me.

Steve: Yeah, sorry. Like I show up to work like an hour early sometimes.

Audrey: Okay. Not me. I like to ease into the day and get my own breakfast.

Mackenzie Ziegler (above in denim jacket) plays Claire’s best friend Kat.

GH: Steve, I was just asking Audrey, you know, it's her first feature film. This feels like such a momentous occasion no matter what, but also to be starring in a film alongside you, her father. And you know, I'm curious to hear from you, too. What does that mean to prepare this project that you put so much of your personal voice into and to prepare it as Audrey's introduction to the world?

Steve: Well, we wrote this script because it's the world that I know. It was very familiar. Didn't have to research it. And when we wrote the movie, we knew that only one person could play the part and that was Audrey. Which makes it a really unique experience as an actor and as somebody who's been in the business a long time. It's deeply personal. Not only Audrey, but my son's in it and he was a PA, and my wife's in it. Our home movies are in it. I don't know. I can't think of a movie where you see the leads in an actual home movie from 20 years ago. I've never... It's got to be a first, right? So, there's a lot in this movie that is so personal. And yet when we went to work, it was work, and Audrey is like any other great actor I've worked with. And what you do is you rehearse and you get comfortable with each other on a different level. I mean, I'm comfortable with my daughter. We're tight, but we were acting together. It's a different thing.

So, we read it over and over and over and over again. And you'd be amazed at how many times in film today and TV you don't rehearse. It's crazy. It's like if you were in a dance group and you didn't, you just improvised a dance. It's crazy, right? It's crazy that we do that. So, we rehearsed and we got really comfortable, and then there were certain scenes... There's a really heavy scene. It's a comedy that will kick you in the throat and there's a really heavy scene that we rehearsed once because it worked.

GH: It must have felt very familiar as a process for you, given that you've been doing this for so long, but also like a new milestone to see your child take off in their career. Audrey, we'll talk about dance in a minute. I know that this isn't your first time performing, but definitely on a new platform and with your father, too. So I can only imagine what it feels... I'm a new parent myself and to just anticipate watching my child grow and then accomplish just must feel like such an accomplishment for you too.

Audrey Zahn was a competitive dancer throughout her childhood. She’s also a trained actor and singer.

Steve: Oh, it's insane. And I tell people she's really good. She's better than really good. But I'm aware of the fact that I'm dad and I'm going to say certain things, but just go see the movie. You tell me.

GH: Well, everyone definitely has to see the movie. That's a given. But I want to talk a little bit more about some of those parallels to real life that really exist within this movie. Audrey, it's so clear that you're an actual dancer, but even outside of dance, there are a couple of different themes in the movie that, you know, Steve, you mentioned really spoke to you personally, and I'd love to hear about how you saw your real life mirrored in this project.

Audrey: Oh my god. Well, I grew up as a competitive dancer. Well, so did Kenzie. So, we related really deeply to the storyline. Nor have I seen a lot of movies that have surrounded what it's like to be a competitive dancer growing up. It takes a lot of work, a lot of time, like blood, sweat, and tears, I guess you would say. And people don't realize how much work goes into it and what kind of relationships you make along the way, which is Kenzie and my relationship in the movie, because you kind of create like a sisterhood, brotherhood, just being together on stage and in rehearsal and being yelled at by your teacher for crazy reasons. And it really turns you into a specific type of person.

And then of course, growing up, I did have my dad bring me to competitions and he would make the props and bring them on stage before we would go out and do the dance. And this movie specifically is loosely based on my very last competition my senior year. I was competing for Miss Dance of America and my mom could not take me, just like the movie, and my dad took me and there was like a cowboy convention going on, too.

Steve: I remember that. That was crazy.

Audrey: It was like a mix, and then it was at the Gaylord Hotel. You guys know that hotel?

Steve: It's crazy. It's a giant dome, man. And there was like this convention with cowboy hats and cowboy boots, but it like lowkey wasn't weird because we were dressed crazy too. So it was insane. So we kept calling Rick… You know I wrote this with and directed this and Kobe who is our editor and producer. They kept laughing and I'd call and I'd be like, moved, so beautiful, you know? They're like, "Dude, there's such a movie here." I'm like, "I know. I know." That's how it was born.

GH: Yeah. So, the movie, there was a kernel of an idea while you were doing competitive dance in your teenage years. How long has this movie been in you?

Audrey: Like five years.

Steve: That competition was 2021. But I never thought of making a movie. It was really spurred on by Rick and Kobe. And then we're like, well, yeah, this is a subject that I don't think has been well represented, you know, and so we started kicking it around and then we thought, yeah, but it can't just be that, right?

Steve: And then a producer, Jason Reid, great producer, called us and was like, "You guys got a story? I need something with heart." And we said, "Yeah." And we started pitching it to him. And then we thought, you know, what would be the obstacle? What would be the hurdle? It was like, "Oh, I'll be estranged because of a loss." Family grief.

GH: Yeah, there are a few themes in the movie that are underrepresented as you just mentioned and I think one of them that you mentioned to me when we talked last week was male friendship and really seeing the relationship between the characters in the film, and maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

Steve: Ethan Hawke, who's my friend in real life, and I met in the early 90s. We did theater here in New York, and he played my friend. And it's a beautiful male relationship of two friends that actually say, "I love you." Our movie lacks all cynicism. There is none.

Ethan Hawke (right) plays Jason’s friend Brian in She Dances. The two actors have been friends since the ‘90s.

GH: Yeah. I really liked seeing you show up as a father who was struggling but was doing the work. There's a scene when you open the freezer at the motel that you're staying at because the hotel was booked for the wrong week. Very manly mistake. But you open the freezer and you empty out a bottle of vodka.

Steve: Yeah. No, there's that, too. He's recovering and doing well. We didn't want our movie to go to that spot that all movies go to where then I get drunk and then she gets mad and then we have a fight and then we get together again and then we win. You know, it's like we didn't want to go to those kind of places. It wasn't about that.

GH: It's really inspiring to see how you both work through these challenges in parallel in the movie. And Audrey, you know, at the end, the culmination is that you turn this dance very personal at the last minute. What kind of inspiration have you taken from your career in dance to date to really show up in that scene?

Audrey: Yeah, I mean to be honest, the final dance was kind of a gift for myself and young Audrey who is in the studio 4 hours a day exhausted because as a dancer you're just extremely disciplined all the time and you follow the rules and the competitions are very strict. Claire is a really interesting young woman because she decides that actually no, I'm going to break away and I'm going to do what I want to do and it's going to be healing for me and it's going to bring me and my dad closer together. So she's like screw it, that's what I'm going to do. I'm my own person. And I wish as a young dancer I would have done more of that. But it's really beautiful. I felt like I was able to do it through her and leave it on the floor which not a lot of dancers get the opportunity to do because it's hard to keep working as a dancer. That's why I went into musical theater and tried to keep it going. But this was kind of my final homage to all the work and dancers that go through similar things that I did. I would have loved a movie like this growing up, you know. So it's really cool.

GH: I want to ask you more about your experience as a competitive dancer with other young women and the two relationships that we see between you and other young women in the film are very different. You are so close with your partner Cat and then there's the villain Dolph who you two in a way idolize but also are competitive with, and you know how did those kind of dynamics in the film mirror your experience in real life?

Audrey: Oh man, I mean it mirrors it to a tee to be honest because I personally was never a very competitive person. I've always been extremely competitive with myself and I think that kind of reflects in Kenzie and Claire's relationship is like we always were pushing each other up, supporting each other. But with Dolph or Mara actually, there were a lot of those girls because we were being put under an immense amount of pressure at a young age to win and be perfect.

Audrey: And it was hard not to get to you. But the funny thing about it too is like the girl who plays Mara, her name is Haley Fish and she was the big girl at my dance school that all the younger girls would scream about. There's a scene in the movie where the younger dancer girls come out and they just scream because they're so excited to see us. And there really was that kind of dynamic at the dance school and Haley was that dancer for us. So, it's so funny that she's the one that's being a jerk to me.

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Steve: We call her Mara, but they call her Dolph from like Dolph Lundgren from Rocky. My character is like "who would name a baby Dolph? No one named a baby Dolph." All right, whatever. But that's also an interesting aspect to our movie. The family tree of our movie is really unique. It's almost entirely friends and family. It's a little movie. That's why it needs support.

Steve: But Haley I knew in high school. Jamie Harner, our choreographer, lived upstairs in our house for a year. He's like a son to me. Haley and Jamie won nationals with a duet back in the day. Haley's mom is a judge and is the voice of the competition. Her dad is our music coordinator on the movie. If you see the credits, you'll see whole families. And it's a great movie, you know. It's all homegrown. But we knew that if we didn't have connections with the dance world and Kentucky, we wouldn't have been able to make this movie or it would have been three times the budget. So we got a lot of favors and it looks a lot bigger than it is.

Good Housekeeping editor in chief Elspeth Velten (right) interviewed Steve and Audrey Zahn at Hearst in March.

Audrey: My old dance school helped us out. They brought all the dancers in. They filmed one of their actual competitions. So, all those girls were there for free that I grew up dancing with.

GH: It must feel very rewarding to have bootstrapped this film and to see the results of this story that's been put on by your community. I can only imagine how much of an achievement that must feel like.

Steve: Oh, it's insane. We're going to play Lexington, Kentucky on Thursday the 26th and it opens the 27th and we're going to be at this old theater downtown. It's an 800-seat house and it'll be packed with friends and family. It's going to be really cool. And then we're going to come to New York because it's playing at AMC Empire.

GH: I heard there's another parade that day.

Steve: Well, that's just Rick and I handing out popcorn to people. Like, come in, see our movie.

GH: Audrey's best advice to you for that is to be early.

Audrey: Yeah, to be early. Watch out for the parade.

Steve: I knew we should have walked.

She Dances is in theaters nationwide on March 27.