The Last Thing Angourie Rice Told Me

Hello Sunshine, the production company helmed by Reese Witherspoon, already has one successful book-to-series adaptation under its belt this year—Daisy Jones & the Six, have you heard of it?—and I suspect the company’s about to go two for two this spring with The Last Thing He Told Me. Complete with a strange disappearance and a race to find answers, the Apple TV+ limited series, co-created by author Laura Dave and Josh Singer, promises to take viewers on a thrilling ride from start to finish. For actress and avid reader Angourie Rice, it was a dream project.

The Last Thing He Told Me was an immediate hit when it was published on May 4, 2021, spending 65 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and selling over 1.3 million copies. From the jump, the story about a woman who forms an unexpected bond with her 16-year-old stepdaughter while searching for the truth behind her husband’s sudden disappearance captivated readers. "The thing about the book that I loved was it was such a quick read,” Rice shares over the phone. "You just dive into the story, and you don’t come up for air until you’re finished.” I can say I had a similar experience watching the show, devouring all seven episodes available for screening over the course of one day.

In Rice’s opinion, what makes for a successful adaptation is picking the right format. By choosing a limited series, the story is broken up into sections, or chapters, in a way that feels natural, and episodes are divided up between different directors. "That was one of the things that intrigued me. … This is a story that works really well as a book but also works well as a series. And neither form feels limited. They both can explore the story in different ways, which I think is really cool,” she says. 

Rice, who is 22 and hails from Melbourne, Australia, shines in the role of Bailey, the stubborn and strong-willed stepdaughter of Hannah (Jennifer Garner). In episode one, there’s a line that Hannah says to her husband Owen in reference to Bailey: "She knows who she is.” It was one of the aspects of the character that Rice really liked from the get-go—Bailey has a strong idea of who she is, even at 16 years old. "When your life is tied to just one person, you feel like you know everything about yourself because you don’t have all these multiple things to draw from,” Rice says. "Her identity is defined by her relationship with her dad.” But it’s how a young person deals with that relationship suddenly going away and realizing everything they thought they knew about themselves might be a lie that was exciting to explore for the actress. It begged a lot of questions from Rice: "How does someone even react? How does Bailey still have a sense of humor? How does she have the energy to make jokes at Hannah’s expense? How does someone ever survive that?”

Tapping into Bailey’s complex situation and psyche was certainly a challenge for Rice, but sharing the majority of her scenes with Garner, who she describes as one of the kindest and most welcoming people she’s ever worked with, allowed her to feel secure and confident in her work and gave her the space to be vulnerable and really explore the uncomfortable moments. Rice and Garner perform the complicated stepmother-stepdaughter dance brilliantly. We see the tension in earlier episodes begin to release, and an unbreakable bond forms. Rice credits that dynamic to the time she and Garner had together with Dave and Singer before filming to go through the script line by line. "That was really important in building Hannah and Bailey’s arc because we got to really pinpoint the specific scenes where they might have a turning point or where they might connect a little bit for the first time,” she says.

When I ask Rice about her fondest memory working with Garner, she tells me about a time when they were filming on the Fox lot in the summer. The weather was gorgeous, and Garner would often ride a bike from her trailer to the sound stage. "I was like, ‘That’s so cool. I love that!’” she says. A few days later, a brand-new green bike showed up in front of Rice’s trailer, courtesy of Garner. "I was over the moon,” Rice says. "We would go through the works, and then when we were ready, we would ride our bikes to the sound stage.” 

Rice’s previous work runs the gamut from loveable comedies like The Nice Guys and Honor Society to action-adventure must-sees like the recent Spider-Man franchise to poignant dramas like the Emmy-winning series Mare of Easttown. But the actress does have a particular affinity for literary adaptations thanks to her love of reading. A bibliophile, she hosts a podcast called The Community Library, where, twice monthly, she goes on a deep dive into the stories she’s consumed recently. At the time I’m writing, the most recent episode is an investigation of the "sad hot girl” genre. I ask her opinion on what we should all be reading now, and she’s quick with the disclaimer "whatever you want!” but does mention the recipe book Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For) by Ella Risbridger. "It’s mostly comprised of recipes, but it’s also about grief and mental health and healing and how food can heal your relationship with yourself and the world around you and how it can give a person purpose to get up every morning,” she says. "It really hit me for some reason. It was the perfect blend of memoir, self-help, mental health, and recipes, so that’s one that I’ve really loved recently.”

As far as the books she’s excited to see make it to screen in the near future, she adds, "I recently read the last book in the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series by Holly Jackson. It’s a British YA series about a girl in high school who decides to solve a cold-case murder in her town. They are turning it into a series. I think the BBC is doing it.” She’s also ecstatic about the new Percy Jackson live-action series currently in development at Disney.

An adaptation could even be in the cards for Rice’s own book that she co-wrote with her mother. The novel, Stuck Up and Stupid, is expected to hit shelves later this fall. "I wanted to write something that was like Clueless but for Pride and Prejudice,” she reveals. She first asked her mom, a playwright and TV writer, to pen the story for her, but her mother suggested they do it together. The book has nods to Rice’s own life, as it spans the experience of growing up in Australia in a small beach community and navigating Hollywood. "We wrote a lot from experience because my mom was with me when I was a kid working in the U.S., and it was so special and exciting to write something with her, in particular, because we have a very similar sense of humor, and we’ve gone through so much stuff together, [and] we’ve had very different experiences of the same thing,” she says. When I ask if we might see more books following Stuck Up and Stupid, Rice laughs and hints that they have some more stuff in the works.

At the moment, though, the actress is deep in production on her next project, Mean Girls Musical. Rice is playing Cady Heron in the film adaptation of the Tony-nominated Broadway show, but she’s been sworn to secrecy and can’t spare any details outside of the fact that she has witnessed "some incredible performances.” 

As our conversation nears its end, I ask Rice one final question: In the spirit of your new series, what’s the last thing you want to tell me? She replies, "One thing I want to tell you is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. … The new Boygenius album [is] coming out in less than a week. I’m very excited. … That’s been on my mind every single day.”

Catch up on The Last Thing He Told Me, now streaming on Apple TV+. 

Photographer: David Roemer

Stylist: Aryeh Lappin

Hairstylist: Laura Costa

Makeup Artist: Misha Shahzada