Rita Wilson had a "visceral feeling" watching the gentle Swedish comedy "A Man Called Ove," in which a curmudgeonly widower's plans for suicide are derailed by the lives of those around him. As she has expanded her career beyond acting, she has found more ways to express what she's driven to explore; she knew she had to develop an American remake starring her husband, Tom Hanks. But when director Marc Forster suggested Wilson contribute a song to "A Man Called Otto," she didn't write about how nice it is to have friends, or that we all have something to live for.
She wrote about the continuing relationship we have with those we love who are no longer here.
"I've always understood loss," says Wilson, co-writer (with David Hodges) of the Oscar-shortlisted original song, " 'Til You're Home." To illustrate, she details her parents' harrowing journeys to the United States from Greece and communist Bulgaria; how she realized as an adult she had a brother, her father's first child, only to learn he had died as an infant. When she lost her father in 2010 (her mother died in 2014), the director Mike Nichols told her, "The conversation continues."
