Ron Howard, the Oscar-winning filmmaker behind Hillbilly Elegy, says he’s still taken aback by Vice President JD Vance’s “divisive” political style, even after immortalizing the Republican’s early life on film.
Speaking to Vulture, Howard reflected on the 2020 Netflix drama, which starred Glenn Close and Amy Adams as Vance’s grandmother and mother, with actor Gabriel Basso portraying Vance as an adult.
The film, adapted from Vance’s bestselling memoir, netted Close Oscar and SAG nominations and earned Adams another SAG nod.
“It remains a bit of a surprise to me,” Howard admitted when discussing Vance’s rise from venture capitalist to the second-highest office in the nation.
“I would not have seen it coming, and I wouldn’t have expected his rhetoric to be as divisive as it sometimes is.”
Still, Howard confessed he hasn’t been closely tracking the vice president’s every move.
“He was trying to run an investment fund. So the run for Senate and the strategy he’s chosen to follow are not what I would’ve expected.”
Howard said he doesn’t dwell on the film’s cultural footprint, describing Hillbilly Elegy as “a mixed bag and probably quite culturally divided.”
He acknowledged critics largely panned it, but audiences gave it “pretty good” scores.
Director Ron Howard spoke on JD Vance's political direction saying it "surprised" him during a discussion on the 2024 election. pic.twitter.com/bic8Svs7uM
— USA TODAY Politics (@usatodayDC) September 9, 2024
While Howard hasn’t spoken extensively with Vance in years, he revealed he did send a congratulatory message after Vance and President Trump won in 2024.
“I did one text, after the election, which was just sort of ‘Godspeed. Try to serve us well.’”
For the director, Hillbilly Elegy was more than just a political story. “There were aspects… that were personal because I wanted to do something about the heartland that wasn’t a bank-robbing story or about farming.”
Howard’s shock at Vance’s alliance with Trump dates back years. In 2022, he told Variety he was “surprised” by the move, recalling that during production politics rarely came up.
“I was interested in his childhood and navigating the particulars of his family and his culture… To me, he struck me as a very moderate center-right kind of guy.”
In those rare political conversations, Howard said Vance “didn’t care for Trump. He didn’t like him at all, as he tweeted.”
Howard added that while he hasn’t spoken to him since, he hopes the vice president applies “good common sense” to his role.
Basso, who brought Vance to life on screen, now finds himself tied to history.
“It’s wild to think that I’ll be forever associated with his pipeline [to becoming Vice President],” he said, noting that a search for “vice president” will now always connect to his name.
Asked if he regretted the role, Basso was blunt: “No. I mean, at the time, he wasn’t even in politics.”
Comparing it to knowing a friend before they became famous, the actor said, “You just knew them, and you worked with them… and everything.”
In another interview, Basso called it “weird” to be part of Vance’s timeline but recalled they had “talked a little bit” before filming.
“He’s a cool dude… We just talked about life — about growing up in the woods.”
Not everyone from the set views Vance the same way. Glenn Close told The View in January that the man she met while promoting the film is “totally different” now.
“I don’t know what happened,” Close commented. “Power is probably the biggest aphrodisiac for a human being.”
Close also mocked Vance’s infamous jab at liberal politicians without children, when he said on Tucker Carlson Tonight that America is being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies, who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.”
In August 2024, Close fired back on Instagram with a photo of herself and her cat.
“Eve would have left a bleeding mouse head in the bed of anyone who criticized any kind of lady with a CAT!” she wrote.
Cat lady and Hillbilly Elegy star Glenn Close makes a stand against J.D. Vance: "Eve would have left a bleeding mouse head in the bed of anyone who criticized any kind of lady with a CAT!"
https://t.co/uUIDigQal2
#Discussion #Fauxmoi #Gossip pic.twitter.com/FCiKWYeV6i— INBELLA (@inbella) August 13, 2024
The same month she said to Variety about Vance, “You only hope that people in our government have a moral backbone and that they don’t say one thing and then say something that’s 150 degrees different.”
Close also told the outlet that she had no desire to speak with Vance. “I wouldn’t sit down with him,” she said. “What good would it do?”
The Netflix adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy chronicles Vance’s upbringing in working-class Middletown, Ohio, depicting his turbulent family life, his escape from poverty, and his eventual graduation from Yale Law School — a journey he often credited to his grandparents “Papaw” and “Mamaw.”