Voicemails for Isabelle isn’t a true story, but it’s inspiration is way darker than you think

The new hit romance film Voicemails for Isabelle has just come out on Netflix, and its creator has revealed its surprising true inspiration.

In Leah McKendrick’s Voicemails for Isabelle, Wes (Nick Robinson) falls in love with Jill (Zoey Deutch), in a very unconventional way. Wes starts receiving voicemails from Jill, directed at her late sister Isabelle, after he inherits her phone number. Although this romance isn’t based on a strictly true story, director Leah McKendrick has revealed to People that she drew inspiration for the story from a dark joke at a comedy show.

“Then the next comedian gets on stage, and she goes, ‘It’s so nice that your dad calls you. My dad hasn’t called me in three years.’ And everyone’s kind of like, ‘Ooh’,” Leah explained. “And then she’s like, ‘He’s dead.’ I was the only one that laughed. And then it really got the wheels turning, and I thought to myself, it’s so funny, this idea of a girl who keeps waiting for her dad to call her back.”

The joke made cogs turn in the director’s head, who is behind other young adult films like the I Know What You Did Last Summer remake.

The writer continued: “And then I thought, ‘If my dad dies, I won’t be waiting for him to call me back because my dad doesn’t call me back and he’s alive.’ And then I thought if my sister died, I’d be waiting for her to call me back. And then I thought, no, if my sister died, I would just keep calling her.”

She was also inspired by the long voicemails she sent her real-life sister, about everything from modern dating woes to career stress.

“I would just let it all hang out,” she added. “And what a horror story it could be if somebody were to ever hear my most unfiltered self. But you would know that if somebody fell in love with that unfiltered self, it would be real.”

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Featured image via Netflix