‘Welcome to the Rileys’ director Jake Scott discusses casting Kristen & lack of pole dancing

His biggest coup, however, was casting Kristen Stewart, co-star of the blockbuster Twilight films, as the underage hooker that the plot turns on. “I loved her in Into the Wild. I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s exactly the right quality I’m looking for in Mallory.’ It’s a sort of feral quality.”

Scott spent a good year with the screenwriter, streamlining plot points and making them subtle. The death of the Rileys’ daughter is established in a deft and unexpected manner. “She used to exist in flashbacks, but one of the first things I did with Ken was take all the flashbacks out. I kept going back to the idea of restraint.

“While we were in New Orleans, it was very tempting to photograph the cityscape for all of its beauty, but I really didn’t think that was relevant to the characters.
“Some people have said, “It’s a shame you don’t get to see Kristen actually dancing on a pole,’ but that was again a conscious decision. I didn’t shoot it. I was being asked to shoot it, but I wouldn’t shoot it because I didn’t feel that it was relevant to what Doug was going through. And I think, if I had shown her doing that, it was possible the audience would connect that to Doug and to something he was doing as a character. I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want that to be in question.”

Read more of this great interview Here