No need to ask, Leah McKendrick has seen your TikToks and Instagram posts about Voicemails for Isabelle.

In the one week since Netflix released what is being praised online as one of the best rom-coms in recent years, McKendrick — who serves as writer, director, and one of the stars of the film — says she has experienced just about every emotion a person can feel. Even more than that, she’s watched as the audience has felt those same feelings alongside her… especially the viewers she wasn’t expecting.

“Oh my God, I love — I will say — I love the husbands crying,” she tells DECIDER of the online reaction to her No. 1 film on Netflix. “Husbands crying always because my life motto is ‘This one’s for the girls,’ you know? Everything I do is for the girls and the gays. So it’s very meaningful to me when men, straight men, also connect. It’s not that I’ve given up on them, I love them. My husband happens to be a straight man, but it’s like it’s so girl-coded. I do everything for my younger self, honestly. So when the men also pick up on it and are crying and like taking part in it and dancing, I’m so stoked.”

It’s hard not to watch and cry as the movie checks all of the emotional boxes and even has some fans online saying that it has renewed their faith in love. Voicemails follows Jill (Zoey Deutch), who leaves voice messages to her deceased sister Izzy (Ciara Bravo), telling her about her life in San Francisco in the months after her death. Unwittingly, a Texas real estate agent (Nick Robinson) begins to receive the messages after Izzy’s phone number is reassigned. While the film is chock full of classic rom-com shenanigans, it has also resonated with audiences who have praised the display of non-romantic love between sisters and friends.

In turn, that connection and thematic exploration in the film has yielded some pretty incredible TikToks and social media posts, where users are sharing everything from their discovery of Easter eggs to their Robyn dance parties and their puffy-eyed husbands who swore they weren’t interested. In summary, it’s all a filmmaker wants when they set out to tell a story that moves the audience to laugh, cry, and (maybe just maybe) leave a voicemail for a loved one. It’s a moment McKendrick never wants to wake up from.

“It’s been the dream. It’s been everything that we hoped for,” the triple-threat says. “You dare not dream this big, right? You try to tell yourself, ‘I am proud of my movie. I know that my movie is my heart on the screen.’ And so many hundreds of people came together to lend me their magic. And I’m so proud of everybody’s hard work. So it was sort of like we did the damn thing.”

Check out DECIDER’s full interview with McKendrick below.

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DECIDER: Leah, congratulations, what a whirlwind. What has this been like for you?

LEAH MCKENDRICK: It’s been the dream. It’s been everything that we hoped for. You dare not dream this big, right? You try to tell yourself, like, “I am proud of my movie. I know that my movie is my heart on the screen.” And so many hundreds of people came together to lend me their magic. And I’m so proud of everybody’s hard work. So it was sort of like we did the damn thing. And you try to just go, we did it! And it’s not our business anymore, and it doesn’t belong to me anymore. It’s the world’s. But of course, you’re like hoping and praying that the internet is going to get behind it and that the numbers are going to be there and the people are going to cry and the people are going to laugh. Obviously, you hope for that. But I did not anticipate [this. And I’m a dreamer, trust me, but I did not expect to have this many people crying. I did not expect to hit No. 1 so quickly. Me and Nick and Zoey are just giddy on our text thread.

And the internet has really gotten behind it. What has been the best reaction you’ve seen so far?

Oh my God, I love — I will say I love the husbands crying. Husbands crying always becuase my life motto is “This one’s for the girls.” Everything I do is for the girls and the gays, so it’s very meaningful to me when men, straight men, also connect. It’s not that I’ve given up on them, I love them. My husband happens to be a straight man, but it’s so girl-coded. I do everything for my younger self, honestly, so when the men also pick up on it and are crying and like taking part in it and dancing, I’m so stoked.

There are so many dads out there who are watching with their daughters and seeing their own Jill and Izzy, which hits on a different level. What is your own Izzy [her younger sister] saying about this?

She’s so proud of me. It’s been a very long journey and she’s really good at not getting attached to things that way, she’s a rock. I can get so heartbroken by this business when It’s an eight-year journey, you know. But she loved it immediately. And on my last page, the dedication said, “To my little sister, Olivia Isabelle, who makes me brave.”

Well, now I’m going to cry.

I know, I kind of want to, too. Are we going to cry?

If there’s ever a movie to just let the tears flow, it’s this one, which gave us heart and emotion, and so many dance parties. I noticed on your Instagram, rather than linking to IMDB or anything, you link to playlists for your movies. Talk to me about the importance of music for your projects.

It’s everything to me. So many of the scenes were inspired by the songs, like it’s not the other way around, where I write it and then I search for a needle drop. No, I’m curating a playlist from the moment that I come up with the concept and I’m finding songs and as I’m listening. I’m like, “Oh my God, what if ‘Dancing on My Own’ is their song just the way that me and my sister are obsessed with Robyn and they have this dance that they both do, no matter where they are, and they’re connected by the phone, like all of it is inspired by my music and and it’s just so integral to who I am as both an artist and a human. And I want people to take the playlist and listen to it and have it score their own lives. I mean, it’s just spiritual to me, you know? I talk a lot about the Eras Tour and and holding on to other Swifties and crying to ‘Marjorie’ and how pure it was and how I felt like a 13-year-old girl again and that anything was possible because humanity was so connected and I felt such community. And I just thought, “Yeah, there’s nothing better than a well-placed needle drop in a movie.”

And not just ‘Marjorie,’ we have two Taylor Swift songs. Can we say these are your favorites or were these just the ones you felt most perfectly met the story?

I’m a huge Swiftie. I honestly think my favorite Taylor Swift song might be ‘The 1’ from Folklore or ‘Delicate.’ My favorite album is 1989 — I need a top ten Taylor Swift song [list]. But every single film that I have has like the dream needle drops from T. Swift. There were like five Taylor Swift songs [in Voicemails For Isabelle], I had ‘London Boy’ in there at one point. It’s crazy that Netflix gave me two, let me put it that way. They’re out of their goddamn minds to have given me two Taylor Swift songs like that’s wild and I will never stop loving them for that.It was an embarrassment of riches, truly.

Two-parter here: How did Este Haim come into the process of composing for this and have we heard from Taylor yet?

I don’t know that we’ve heard from Taylor, I have to check in with Este. I don’t want to pressure her. Girl is busy, she’s got a lot going on. We will be ready whenever she watches. But Este, authentically, she and Amanda [Yamate] were the best composers for the job. Aside from any relationships, they love Robyn like me. They understood exactly what I was going for. Este’s obviously super duper close with her sisters. Really, from the script, they just connected and that’s number one. Beyond their insane, ridiculous talent. You want composers who are feeling it soul deep the way that they did. It’s a really kind of spiritual experience working with composers like Este and Amanda. I can’t imagine anybody else feeling this and elevating this the way that they did.

I saw in another interview that you talked about the importance of nonromantic love in our lives and I feel like that is expressed in this. Obviously, you want to keep it a rom-com, but what was your reasoning behind the themes of girlhood and sisterhood?

When I wrote it originally, I wrote it eight years ago, I was single and the true love in my life was my sister — is my sister, will always be my sister. She taught me what true love is. And when you’re dating, especially in your 20s, nothing can compare. You’re meeting all these strange boys and you’re like, “None of this feels like the sole deep connection that I have with my sister, with my girlfriends.” I don’t think that we should settle. I don’t think we should lower the bar just because we want romantic love. I don’t believe in that. And I believe the right partner will love you unconditionally, the way we love our family. That is possible. Originally, I was writing a script that was an ode to the love of my life, my sister, and simultaneously a dream of finding someone who would see me in all my messiness, the way my sister does and loves me anyway.

It’s so true. One of my friends has two kids, a girl and a boy, and she always says she won’t stop until she gives her daughter a sister and that’s the power of that bond. Which also makes the end scene with Izzy dancing behind Jill such a gut punch. How did that come about?

That was wild. I wasn’t sure about that. I thought about it and I was like, “It could be creepy. It could be weird,” and people might be like, “You just ruined the movie.” I wasn’t sure, but I, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I’m a big believer and just get it, just shoot it. But the problem is we’re shooting in Vancouver, we have to get Ciara [Bravo] to fly in. It’s an additional day, she’s got to learn the dance, we got to schedule this, it’s a whole thing. It’s not omething that you can just throw together on a whim, right? So there were a lot of discussions happening with producers and they were like, “It’s not going to work, we can’t figure this out scheduling-wise.” And I was like, “Okay.” Then I just kept bringing it up as though I had just thought of it.

How’d it happen, then?

They worked their magic because I think they figured out I was just never going to give this up. I need it. We had no time, the sun was going down. We had so much to shoot that day. Everything’s looking beautiful, we had a lot of background people, I don’t even know if I told her where to stand. I was literally on a microphone — there’s like 100 people and Netflix is there, sun is going down, we get one more take and I was like, “Ciara, get in there.” And she gets in and hits it and I was like, “Please, Lord, please.” Suddenly I’m so Catholic like, “Please, Jesus, I want it so bad.” And somehow it just was that perfect shot. It’s so affirming and beautiful to have the internet really connecting with it and pointing it out.

I didn’t even catch it on the first watch — I probably was crying too hard — but my sister pointed it out and I’m so glad she did because I loved it.

First of all, thank you. And I will say the fact that you didn’t see her at first is totally okay, because my hope was that people would go back to see it if they didn’t see her the first time. And I didn’t want it to be so obvious that it was like slapped in your face. But we did run the risk of not everybody seeing it.

There are a few Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the movie, like the pink and purple fireworks as Wes is running at the end. Are there any that you haven’t seen pointed out yet?

Okay, so there is one that no one has pointed out yet. And it was like a real kind of pain in the butt to get it so I really want people to see it. How can I hint at it without giving it away? I will say it’s something that I put in there when Wes is running in the Benson Boone sequence; there is an Easter egg. Another way of honoring the icons that came before me, but no one has seen it yet.

Maybe they’ll find it after this. Side note: Are you at all a Bob’s Burgers fan?

No, but my brother is very into animated everything.

Hold on, how is your brother feeling about this love letter to your little sister hitting big? What is he saying?

[Laughs] He said that he inspired the whole movie and he’s my greatest inspiration and my muse. He’s spouting all kinds of fake news. But in my last movie, Scrambled, it was just her and her brother and no sister.

Oh, so he’s fine. He got his moment.

He’s fine. I kind of switch off honoring people. I have a film that’s really about fathers and daughters and that relationship… It’s a horror film. And then I have a movie at Sony called Hi, Mom that’s really about the complex but beautiful relationship between mothers and daughters. So I’m always exploring all, all of the relationships around me. He knows this one’s for my sister, this one’s for Olivia, but he really thinks this one’s about him.

That’s amazing.

I will say, when we were little kids — brother’s two years older than me and our sister is six years younger than him — there were a few years it was just me and my brother and I was a ham. I’ve always been a ham. I would experience weird things in the world, and I would run home and act them out for him. So that part of the movie is really inspired by my brother and me, and how my brother was my first captive audience, and he would just kind of be like, “and then what happened? And then what happened?” So when people are like, “I don’t have a sister, but I have a brother,” I’m like, “That could be the love of your life, too.” And he is in many ways that first love for me too. So it’s all valid.”

So then you’re definitely going to love this episode of Bob’s Burgers. It’s called “The Plight Before Christmas,” and it’s really about the power of a sibling bond. It will get you. No spoilers.

I need to see it. That sounds really up my alley. I’m going to like that.

Get to it whenever you have time, five years from now. I’ve seen so many people saying you need a blank check. So what’s next?

I have been in the trenches for many years fighting to tell stories like this, and the most exciting prospect is to just to get to do it more and to not be alone with my laptop, which has been a lot of my life these past few years. And to get to actually build the ship and board the ship and share it with the audience. So from my Shania Twain film, that is my ultimate dream come true, to my monster movie that my little young self is like freaking out — working with James Wan and Jason Blum, huge, huge inspirations and heroes of mine — I mean I, I have the worst imposter syndrome right now because I just feel so, so lucky to finally be at a point where people get to see my work. I’ve been at it for a long time, but I’ve never reached Nigeria the way that I’m getting messages and Manila. I’m finally getting to do what I came here to do. So now I’m like, “Y’all are stuck with me now. Now you’re not going to be able to kick me out. I’m going to just keep making as much as they’ll let me make.”

Voicemails for Isabelle is now streaming on Netflix.

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