Director Vanessa Caswill and star Maika Monroe detail how the scene — as well as Kenna’s retelling of it to Ledger (Tyriq Withers) — came together.

Reminders of Him star Maika Monroe breaks down that tragic car accident scene: ‘It’s very intense’

Director Vanessa Caswill and star Maika Monroe detail how the scene — as well as Kenna's retelling of it to Ledger (Tyriq Withers) — came together.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and NME.

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March 14, 2026 10:30 a.m. ET

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Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) and Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow) in 'Reminders of Him'. Credit:

Universal Pictures

**This article contains spoilers for the film *Reminders of Him*.**

*Reminders of Him *director Vanessa Caswill and star Maika Monroe are pulling back the curtain on how they shot that heartbreaking car accident scene and its aftermath.

The drama, based on Colleen Hoover's 2022 novel of the same name, hinges entirely upon the events that unfold in the tragic scene, which sees Kenna (Monroe) accidentally kill her boyfriend Scotty (Rudy Pankow) after driving her car off the road and into a ravine while high. Believing he died in the accident, Kenna walks back to town and passes out at home, unaware that Scotty was actually still alive and, had she called for help, might have survived the crash.

Kenna later pleads guilty and serves seven years in prison for his death, during which she welcomes their child, Diem (Zoe Kosovic). When she completes her sentence, Kenna returns home to rebuild her life and reconnect with her long-lost daughter.

Caswill tells* * it took an "extended few days to get that sequence right" and that they used in-camera techniques to highlight just how disoriented Kenna, still high and heavily concussed, feels in the aftermath of the accident.

Kenna Rowan (Maika Monroe) and Scotty Landry (Rudy Pankow) in 'Reminders of Him'.

Michelle Faye/Universal Pictures

"From a technical perspective, we had three cars. We shot it over multiple days," she says. "We had the car on a rotisserie spit in a studio, and we also obviously had the stunt of the car actually crashing, which we could only do in one take. So we had multiple cameras for that."

There was also an additional vehicle specifically for filming the scene where Kenna escapes the wreckage. "That was obviously a massive performance thing for her," Caswill says of Monroe. "And it was freezing cold, shot at night, covered in blood, and tiny clothes."

The director also notes that she and cinematographer Tim Ives added a "ghost filter" to the camera so that "the sense of her being concussed and a little bit high and in shock and everything being a bit blurry" was conveyed.

The gruesome flashback is part of a larger sequence in which Kenna reads Ledger (Tyriq Withers) — who is both her love interest and Scotty's best friend — one of her many letters detailing the accident. Monroe tells EW that she remembers there being a "calmness on set" as the two characters bonded over their shared grief.

Monroe and Tyriq Withers in 'Reminders of Him'.

Michelle Faye/Universal Pictures

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"With all these emotional scenes, it feels very personal. That particular day, it was a night shoot, and we were filming in that big house, and it's very intimate," she recalls. "It felt like it was just Tyriq and I in this room, which is a really nice feeling for me to, once again, feel comfortable and able to kind of go to that place emotionally."

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Monroe adds that Kenna definitely wasn't expecting Ledger to react to her retelling of that harrowing night with compassion, either. "That's a really big moment for her as well," she notes. "I think she's been struggling with forgiving herself. She has so much anger towards herself for what happened. With a situation like that, you can't help but think, 'Well, what if I did that? What if I didn't do that?' And it can drive you crazy, almost like a poison inside of you."

This is why Ledger taking a moment to acknowledge Kenna's heartbreak and guilt surrounding Scotty's death is so healing for her.

"In that moment, not only is it therapeutic for her to talk about this out loud, sharing this truth of what happened that she's probably never done, but then having a person say, 'Oh my God. I am so sorry,'" Monroe says. "And understanding her pain and saying, 'Are you okay?' I think that's the start for her to learn to forgive herself."

*Reminders of Him* is in theaters now.

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