Erika Christensen has made a career out of playing people who look like they’ve already lost the argument with themselves. From Traffic to Swimfan to Parenthood to Will Trent, she keeps circling characters who are technically functioning but emotionally stalled, dragging unspoken history behind them like an extra suitcase they refuse to unpack. In the indie drama After All, she doesn’t just play one of those women — she helps bring the whole thing into the world, starring and executive producing a film that’s quiet, heavy, and uninterested in hurrying anyone toward catharsis.
“I loved this character. I loved Ellen,” Christensen said. “When we meet her, she’s not ready. She would just keep going exactly the way she has been if she could.”
Ellen returns home to care for her ailing mother and a teenage daughter who barely knows her, pulling three generations of unresolved damage into one too-hot house. It’s a story about generational trauma, but not the kind that arrives with speeches or lessons. It just sits there, breathing, daring someone to acknowledge it.
“She knows she’s a mess,” Christensen said. “She’s not doing great, but she would just be happy to say, ‘Hey, I am who I am. Take it or leave it.’ And then life forces her to finally grow up.”
Christensen joined After All after the script already existed and financing was starting to line up, but from there the work became hands-on in every sense. “I definitely had a hand in continuing to develop it from when I came on board,” she said. “And then also in just putting it together — calling actors, seeing if people would come play.”
She personally reached out to Zack Gilford and Michael Mali. “They both brought so much,” she said. “And when you’re making a movie like this, with a small budget and a small crew, it takes a lot just to keep the show on the road.”
That effort only made sense because the story itself felt worth fighting for. Movies are impossible to make. “So there has to be a reason to say, ‘Okay, let’s go. Let’s do this.’”
Part of that reason was the film’s refusal to over-explain itself. After All isn’t afraid of silence, of scenes where nothing is said because saying it would be dishonest. Christensen was drawn to that restraint. “The hope we find at the end isn’t sappy,” she said. “It’s sweet, but it’s very grounded. It’s open-ended. It’s more like, ‘Let’s see how things go.’”
That philosophy carries into her performance, especially in the way Ellen’s self-destructive tendencies are never underlined. The film doesn’t insist on labeling her, and Christensen doesn’t either. “From an acting standpoint, if something is true, you don’t have to prove it,” she said. “It’s just true. Either you can sense it or not.”
It’s an approach that also connects Ellen to Angie on Will Trent, another woman shaped by trauma who resists easy definitions. Christensen shot the Will Trent pilot just before making After All, finding out mid-shoot that the show had been picked up to series. Two damaged women, back-to-back, without either turning into a performance of damage.
“I don’t need to do anything to prove to anyone what’s true about her,” she said. “I don’t need to stumble around or telegraph it. It’s just there.”
Despite the emotional weight, Christensen is adamant about not carrying characters home. “There are different schools of acting,” she said, “but the one I subscribe to is having a strict demarcation. I let her go as far as she needs to go because I can always come back to myself.”
She doesn’t see that boundary as limiting — it’s what makes the work possible. “Even some of the heaviest, scariest, most traumatic scenes can be the most fun,” she said. “They require more creation. They pull you so far away from the mundane stuff — like, ‘It’s hot outside’ or ‘I need another cup of coffee.’”
Speaking of heat: much of After All unfolds inside a single house that feels like it’s absorbing decades of bad decisions. Shot with wide lenses and no central air, it’s oppressive in a way that’s both physical and emotional. “That house could’ve been a horror movie,” Christensen said. “And honestly, if you go back far enough in these people’s lives, it was.”
For Christensen, After All represents something increasingly rare: a film willing to trust human stories without dressing them up. “There are always trends in filmmaking,” she said. “But stories about relationships, about people doing their best and facing things they never expected — that’s just life. That will always have a place.”
And if it doesn’t? She shrugged. “It has to. We can’t stop making movies about people.”
After All doesn’t try to fix its characters. It just lets them exist long enough to be seen — and sometimes, that’s the most radical move of all.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
