Jonathan Abrams Wrote ‘Juror #2’ in the Tradition of Clint Eastwood’s ‘Mystic River’ — Then Eastwood Agreed to Direct It

Growing up in San Francisco, screenwriter Jonathan Abrams revered one Bay Area filmmaker especially.

“Clint Eastwood always loomed large not just as a national icon but a local icon,” Abrams told IndieWire. “From his earliest work, like ‘Play Misty for Me‘ and ‘Dirty Harry,’ he was very much associated with the city. Later on, when Abrams discovered Eastwood’s 2003 masterpiece “Mystic River,” he saw a way to combine the demands and satisfactions of genre with something deeper and more personal. “That movie was the North Star for me. It’s about a murder investigation, but it doesn’t culminate in a massive gunfight. It’s really understated.”

Making a character-driven mystery along the lines of “Mystic River” was on Abrams’s mind when he wrote “Juror #2,” a morality play about a juror (Nicholas Hoult) who discovers he is sitting in judgment of a man for a crime for which he, the juror, bears responsibility. So when Abrams heard that Clint Eastwood wanted to direct his script, he was thrilled. “Whether he was aware of it or not, I was dreaming of it as a companion piece to ‘Mystic River,'” Abrams said.

What surprised and delighted the writer was that Eastwood helped him take “Juror #2” even more in that direction. “There are business considerations where you’ve got to do certain things just to get a script through the development grist mill,” Abrams said. “But Clint wanted to strip away all of the things that he felt were overly histrionic and made it feel more like a movie than a grounded story. It was very freeing when he said that, because secretly I wanted that too.”

Telling a more grounded story meant making a courtroom drama less about solving a mystery than exploring the crime’s moral and ethical complications — unlike a twist-driven thriller like “Primal Fear,” “Juror #2” tells the audience who committed the crime about 20 minutes into the movie. “I felt that letting the audience know what was up right away was vital,” Abrams said, noting that then he and Eastwood were free to spend the rest of the movie delving deeply into the characters and the real-world implications of their choices.

“Clint really wanted me to drill down on the human elements,” Abrams said. “Eliminate all the stuff that feels heightened or superficial — we don’t need it. The first thing he ever said to me was, ‘This is a story about people. That’s why I like it, and that’s why I’m choosing to make it.'” The trick for Abrams was maintaining an intensely subjective point of view — part of the movie’s greatness is how intimately it links the viewer to the Hoult character’s emotional ordeal — while honoring the perspectives of the many supporting characters comprising the film‘s huge ensemble.

‘Juror #2’©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

“It’s very difficult because with the jurors, you have to service 12 characters and give each of them a personality, and ideally, that personality has to inform the story in some way,” Abrams said. On top of that, “Juror #2” presents a universe of attorneys, witnesses, and relatives whose experiences intersect and illuminate each other’s lives in fascinating ways. The miracle of Abrams’ screenplay is that he clearly defines all of these characters and gives them depth without making the movie feel overstuffed or confusing — it hums along with a superficial clarity and simplicity even though the questions it raises couldn’t be more provocative and complex.

Ironically, that economy of expression was sometimes the result of scenes that didn’t even make it into the movie — including one that Abrams said he worked on harder than any other. “There’s a party scene early in the film,” he said. “Before we went out to actors, Clint said, ‘I think it would be smart for you to write a real actor bait kind of monologue here so that we can try to snag an actor.’ I wrote 10 drafts of this monologue until it was perfect, and they sent the script to Nicholas Hoult, and he said, ‘I’m in.’ So we were all happy.”

That monologue, in which Hoult’s character talks at length about falling in love with his wife (Zoey Deutch), was one of Abrams’ proudest moments — and then it didn’t make the final cut. “I was like, ‘What?!’ But the interesting thing is that they shot it, the actors read it, so now they know the story of how their characters met.” Knowing that story informed the actors’ approach moving forward, and it gives the performances a resonance that registers with the audience — even if we don’t know the details, we can feel what brought Hoult and Deutch together and their connection gives the movie’s central dilemma even greater urgency.

“It was a great exercise for Clint to put me through, and a great lesson that sometimes you’ve just got to do the work,” Abrams said. Abrams learned other lessons from Eastwood throughout the process: “Trust your instincts. Less is more.” He also learned that working with a powerful director protects a writer from participants whose influence isn’t always in the movie’s best interests, and he hopes that he was able to reciprocate the favor if “Juror #2” turns out to be Eastwood’s final film.

“I’d like to be a small part of Clint going out with a good one,” Abrams said. “The biggest responsibility of this whole thing is honoring him and his legacy.” Although Abrams first hatched the idea for “Juror #2” around 10 years ago, he’s glad the movie is coming out now. “I wrote it as a timeless ode to ’12 Angry Men,’ not realizing that the importance of civil discourse would be greater than ever in 2024,” he said. “Being able to look at a system that may not work the way you want it to, but is still the best system we’ve got, is something I hope people can take away from the movie.”