Trivia / Room

• Actor-Inspired Element: When Joan Allen came on board, the role of Nancy was expanded considerably.
• Award Category Fraud: Jacob Tremblay was nominated for Best Supporting Actor by the SAG Awards, despite the fact that he played the main character, and had more screen time than Brie Larson.
• Beauty Inversion: Brie Larson wore no make-up throughout filming and even stopped washing her face to emphasise the fact.
• California Doubling: Although the movie is set in Akron, Ohio, most of it was filmed in Toronto. During one scene at the hospital after Ma is rescued, the Prince Edward Viaduct and the Don Valley Parkway can be seen out the window in the background, and the rink at Nathan Phillips Square in front of Toronto City Hall was depicted in a brief scene where Ma takes Jack skating.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: For the audiobook, Jack was narrated by a woman doing an impression of a five-year-old boy.
• Dawson Casting: Jacob Tremblay, who plays 5-year-old Jack, was actually 8 when the movie was shot (November–December 2014).
• Deleted Role: Megan Park filmed some scenes as Joy's high school friend, but they were all cut.
• Fake American: Canadian Jacob Tremblay plays American Jack Newsome.
• Life Imitates Art: Three years after the book's release, the crimes of Ariel Castro were discovered in Ohio, the same state where the story is set in. Castro pretended to have a dog in order to lure in his first victim, Michelle Knight, who was raped, impregnated, and forced to abort several times. He also had a child by rape with his second victim, Amanda Berry, who was raised by her in captivity and was six years old when they escaped.
• Method Acting:
  • Jacob Tremblay could not bring himself to yell at Brie Larson, so the director had the entire cast and crew jump up and down on set yelling until he was able to.
  • Brie Larson isolated herself for a month without internet and on a strict diet to really understand what Ma and Jack would have gone through. Towards the end of the month, she became depressed and would cry spontaneously.
  • The film was shot largely in sequence to give Jacob Tremblay a chance to really portray his character growth.
• Self-Adaptation: Emma Donoghue wrote the screenplay based on her book.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay could easily pass for mother and son in real life.
• Similarly Named Works: No relation to The Room (2003). They even had similar official website URLs. Also unrelated to the 2019 film.
• Star-Making Role:
  • For Brie Larson. While she's been around for over a decade, having appeared in films like Hoot and 21 Jump Street, and was part of the cast of United States of Tara, her Oscar-winning role as Ma is going to be remembered as her true breakout role — unless you consider it to be Captain Marvel (2019) instead (though many would argue that she got that one due to Room).
  • Jacob Tremblay also got a significant amount of attention following his role in the film.
• Those Two Actors: William H. Macy and Joan Allen play Ma's parents in the film, 17 years after playing a similarly fractured married couple in Pleasantville. They both also appeared in the film Searching for Bobby Fischer.
• What Could Have Been: The lead role was neck and neck between Brie Larson and Shailene Woodley. Both had starred together in The Spectacular Now. Rooney Mara and Emma Watson were also considered.
• Write Who You Know: Many of Jack's personality traits were inspired by the author's son Finn, who was also five at the time of her writing the novel.

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