Megalyn Echikunwoke as Rose Photo by Sabrina Lantos, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Greta is wonderful as Violet, but you didn’t initially have her in mind.
When I met her I was talking to someone else about playing the part, someone who would help get foreign financing, but the good thing is we’d already decided to do the film without that need, so it wasn’t a push to get this other person. The icing on the cake was that Greta was emerging triumphant from her other projects. We had the freedom to cast who we wanted.

She’s generally played a different type, it was a little bit of a revelation.
I didn’t know that. One of the aids of ignorance is that I don’t have to get over preconceptions about people since I had no conception of them at all. I had no preconception about [Damsels in Distress co-star] Adam Brody or The O.C. or anything.

Is Violet your favorite character ever, or at least one of them?
Yes, she’s my favorite character, I would say, in all my films. In Metropolitan there are like four identification characters. In this film there’s one identification character. It’s actually the first star part I’ve written in a script. It’s an ensemble but it’s an ensemble around a star.

Do you find it energizing to work with a young cast?
I do, I really like it and I also like stories about young people forming their identity, at a crossroads period in their lives.