Rachel

The first thing Lyonne thought after reading the script was, Oh, cool. So I’m the stoner? I haven’t smoked pot since high school! But Rachel is far more than a run-of-the-mill pothead. Yes, she lights up a joint or two in the apartment she shares with her dying father (until Katie bans indoor smoking), but she’s also the only sister who’s been around every day, feeding him or talking through sports gambling odds with him. “She is genuinely showing up the most for their father in the most real way, but gets the flack of being the ‘nobody’ because there have been no tangible life achievements, those imagined or constructed metrics by which we identify a success or failure in a life,” Lyonne says. 

When figuring out Rachel, Lyonne thought about the truths that are often revealed within the walls of a home. “What cracked [the character] open is we weren’t talking about any outside stuff. We were mostly talking about inside stuff, what was going on internally, without ever posturing,” she said. 

It’s in the subtle, quiet moments when Rachel stands in the hallway or sits on a bench outside the apartment building that she is revealed, whether through her fear of bearing witness to her father’s death or her frustration with how she’s perceived by Katie and Christina. Lyonne explains, “She develops the skill to stand up for herself and say, ‘Hey, that’s not the full picture. And the fact that you guys never see me in that way is why I’m always going downstairs and smoking and will talk to anybody in the neighborhood as if they’re my best friend.’” 

Having grown up in Manhattan and played multilayered New Yorkers in Emmy-nominated performances in Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll, Lyonne knew just how to channel both Rachel’s tough exterior and heartbreaking vulnerability. “You can walk around city streets like, I got this. I’m so tough,” says Lyonne, who is also a powerhouse behind the camera, with credits directing and writing episodes of Poker Face, which she stars in, as well as Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll, which she co-creates. “But behind that is an underbelly. Like most of us, I’m quite soft inside, and I break just like a little girl.”

Christina

Anyone who’s seen Olsen’s work in WandaVision or Martha Marcy May Marlene knows she can fluctuate between saving the world and breaking your heart in the blink of an eye. Jacobs was certain Olsen was right for the role of Christina, having directed her in Sorry for Your Loss, in which she masterfully channeled the nuanced complexities of grief.

Yet Olsen was surprised that Jacobs approached her to play the tenderhearted daughter. “[Jacobs] and I actually had to have a lot of conversations about why he felt like I would be right for Christina,” Olsen says. “[He] was like, ‘Oh, I see you as a nurturer and a mediator. And I was like, ‘Well, I don’t really see myself as being so soft and sweet and gentle.’ I didn’t know I projected that.” 

Wedged between the aggressive Katie and the edgier Rachel, Christina is, as Olsen says, a metaphorical “ping pong.” She struggles to take a side, whether with her birth family or with her own family, as she ponders whether she wants to have another child. What struck Olsen about her character is a moment of certainty in which she connects with her father in a way that her showier sisters could not. “[She was] the one who was bravest, to sing to him and be with him when he was in his very sick state, [which] the other sisters were scared of,” she says. “She rises to the challenge for her sisters.” 

To get into character, Olsen tried to rise to her own challenge to really and truly get to know the band around which Christina builds much of her identity. “I listened to a lot of Grateful Dead songs for this movie,” she says. “You know what? Never did it for me.”

Katie 

The very first image of the film is of Katie, dressed in a black turtleneck, looking just off camera and, almost accusingly, asking, “So you’ve been good, right?” In just a few seconds, the eldest daughter reveals herself to be icy, brash, hard, and unforgiving. “Katie’s really overbearing,” Coon says. “Yes, she’s the responsible older sister. And I also believe that she’s an emotionally immature person. Talking to her is really confusing and really frustrating because she’s absolutely incapable of taking your point of view into account. She’s already made up her mind about the outcome.” 

Renowned for her Tony-nominated turn in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Emmy-nominated roles in Fargo and The Gilded Age, as well as a critically acclaimed pivotal role in The Leftovers, Coon hadn’t worked with Jacobs before, though she knew him through her husband, actor and playwright Tracy Letts, who starred in Jacobs’s French Exit (2020) and The Lovers (2017). Figuring out Katie meant digging into the details with Jacobs about the character’s education, her job, her marriage, and the daughter she mentions in passing in the script. 

But it also meant tapping into her own inner Katie. “I don’t think of myself as particularly Katie-like,” Coon says. “But I think my siblings absolutely do. I’m the middle of five kids, but I’m more of an oldest than I am a middle, so I related very much to her desire to be in charge of everything because it gives an illusion of control in a situation wherein you have absolutely no control.” 

Coon didn’t shy away from Katie’s less-than-flattering personality traits. “I don’t care about not being liked,” she says. “It’s more fun to play [someone unlikeable].”

Sibling Revelry

As certain as Jacobs was about his cast, he also knew he had to bring Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne together to New York City for some intensive pre-filming rehearsal so they could convincingly barb, bicker, and bond. They debated intentions, questioned dialogue, and pushed for the characters’ most authentic emotional truths. Using a trick he learned from his mentor Gill Dennis (screenwriter of the Oscar-nominated Walk the Line), Jacobs gave each actor a list of 10 questions about her character. “They were answering questions like, what’s the thing that scares Rachel the most? What’s the thing that Rachel is most proud of?” he explains.

While the characters were being fleshed out for the cameras, the cast was getting comfortable together behind the scenes. “All that time, all day with one another, allowed us to get to know each other in a different way,” Olsen says. 

Those two weeks set the tone for the shoot. “That rehearsal was so special for me because we had all agreed that we felt strong about the script. So now it was: O.K., how do we make this feel sincere?” Jacobs says. Adds Olsen, “I think we were all always doing a litmus test if something was too saccharine or not. We were all very aware that it could go there, and we didn’t want it to be sentimental.” The humor of the predicament organically came through, says Coon: “We weren’t doing bits. People make dark jokes and people laugh when things are terrible.” 

By the end of rehearsals, the cast knew their characters in a way that would feel seamless and organic once cameras began rolling — which was especially important as Jacobs filmed His Three Daughters in chronological order. “By the time we were actually shooting the scenes, all of those [rehearsal questions] made sense because you didn’t have to think about them,” Lyonne says. “Creating that mini universe is hard to do if you’re not really prepared. If you’re still thinking about the words or Why would I do that? you’re not really home.” 

Not that the bonding ended once the clapboard came out. Question Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne about their His Three Daughters memories and at some point, the actors will refer to the time they spent playing the New York Times’ Spelling Bee, among other pastimes. Coon recalls, “[We] would have our little routines: making our teas and eating our snacks and taking a rest on the floor.” Olsen adds: “We were all aggressively involved in each other’s personal lives. All three of us were willing to have that relationship on set. And that’s a choice; that doesn’t always happen with different personality types.” 

The result was a palpable connection. When Coon describes her and her sisters’ offscreen word puzzle prowess, it feels like she’s also defining the way they banded together onscreen throughout emotionally harrowing material: “The three of us were an unstoppable force.”