LEMONADE BLESSING: We Meet Writer/Director Chris Merola At Tribeca 2025!

Introduction

In Lemonade Blessing, John (Jake Ryan), a student, is abruptly enrolled in a private Catholic high school by his devout mother. He soon falls head over heels for a devious classmate ready to push his faith (and morals) to the brink with a series of increasingly uncomfortable actions, all in the name of love. 

Meet Writer, Director, Producer Chris  Merola

Chris Merola is a writer and filmmaker from Long Island, New York. He’s a recent graduate of the MFA Film and Television Production program at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Lemonade Blessing marks his feature film debut.

Interview

Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower recently interviewed writer and director Chris Merola about his new coming-of-age dramedy, Lemonade Blessing. The film had its world premiere on June 5, 2025, at the Tribeca Festival as part of the US Narrative Competition. Details are TBA regarding distribution.

Lightly edited for content and clarity.

Glen Dower:

Mr. Merola, how are you, Sir?

Chris Merola:

I’m good, Glen, thank you so much. Very good to meet you.

Glen Dower:

And you. Straight off the bat, I had a great time with your film. I have just finished my first rewatch, and a lot of that was down to the chemistry of the two leads. And I was racking my brain who, Jake Ryan, playing John, reminded me of. And I decided on a young Tobey Maguire. Thoughts?

Chris Merola:

Well, first, thank you for rewatching! But, Tobey Maguire…my god that’s awesome.

Glen Dower:

Right? So those early scenes between Jake and Skye (Alyssa Friedman) were very much early-Peter Parker/early-MJ in the Raimi Spider-Man movies. Jake does have that quality of not being a nerd, but not being a traditionally good-looking guy. But he has that screen charisma that really elevates the character. How did you come across Jake, first of all?

Chris Merola:

I saw Jake in the film Eighth Grade back in 2018 when I was a lot younger. I think I was Jake’s age when we shot the film. He’s just a really honest person. And I found Eighth Grade to be such a great film in that it reckoned with adolescence in a way that was delicious, awkward, and uncomfortable. And I felt seen by Jake’s character, even though he literally was in the movie for two scenes. But I have that scene memorized. Then we brought him onto the film, my costume designer walked up to me and was like, ‘Dude, you have Chicken Nugget Boy as the star of Lemonade Blessing!

Luckily, when we ended up with our casting director, she either reached out to him or he hit us with a self-tape, and it was so much fun. I called him before we did the chemistry reads, and we’re talking about video games. Like he told me, ‘I love that Zelda was on the first page of the script – that was big for me. That made me dig it!’ And then I think he related to the script, and then people are telling him, like, dude, I think this is you. So it kind of all just came together in that way.

Glen Dower:

Great, because he is perfect for the role, and alongside Skye, also. How did you put them together?

Chris Merola:

It was all in the chemistry read. I had really specific stuff in mind for each character. Like I knew that given their upbringings, John’s character came from a household where he was getting parentified. His parents are getting divorced, and his mom is not getting certain things from her relationship with her husband that she’s trying to get from her son. So John learns to extrovert his emotions. He wears his heart on his sleeve, whereas Lilith is from a household that’s very repressive, very patriarchal. And so she learns to hide her emotions because anything that she expresses gets squashed. So I knew I had to cast an actress who could hide her emotions effectively, but not so effectively that audience members couldn’t see that she was trying to hide her emotions, basically.

I knew just from the self-tapes that Skye was perfect for it because I saw how she could hide her feelings and still let them come out just a crack. So for me, it was just from the very glance that she gave John. The thing that she tried out with was the ‘Can I borrow a pencil’ scene, where John’s like, ‘Are your parents divorced?’ And her eyes just flashed to him from the lockers. I knew she was perfect from that moment. And then the chemistry reads, just confirmed it. They were like lightning together. They were so funny. The chemistry read was the “Fuck Jesus” scene, and they were just doing improv. I love improv. Like, about 50% of the film is improv. And so they were just so great. And I knew they’d be perfect together.

Glen Dower:

Let’s discuss some scenes, as many must have been so much fun to write and direct.  Like we mentioned, the ‘Fuck Jesus’ scene. I love to know how many times they just went again and again and made those iterations of fuck Jesus. And Skye’s character, you must have had a certain amount of fun with her complexity. Because we, as the audience, adore her in certain parts, but then she pulls the rug from underneath us, and John, of course, when she is cruel and controlling. You didn’t want her to be just ‘a girlfriend’, and she was out to prove something. And she says to John himself, ‘The only thing I can control is you!’ Was that a release for you as well?

Chris Merola:

Absolutely! Yeah, I thought it was so important to reckon with the fact that these Catholic high schools are difficult for everyone, but they’re especially difficult for young girls who are getting incredibly powerful messaging about how they should be, how they should act. I think that Lilith is a character who is first coming to terms with the fact that she is a woman. And so she has a certain power over young men who are attracted to her. That seems to be, at this point in her life, the only thing that she has any control over, because at home, she can’t consume certain media. She’s got a name that she doesn’t like.

She’s got a very controlled existence at school. All they’re doing is running a baby breeding factory where all they’re doing is saying, hey, give up your chairs for young girls. Make sure that you get with a girl who’s a virgin and has some kids so you can send some new customers to our school in the next 15 years. So I think she’s coming to terms with that and just feeling angry. And while also having her sexual awakening. So all these things are very merged for her.

And so when she goes for John, all these things are coming to terms with, you know, she’s like experiencing her first attraction to this boy. But she also just doesn’t know how to have a relationship that isn’t a power dynamic, because that’s all she’s witnessed at home is just a relationship where one person gets crushed and one person gets hurt. So I think she’s acting out her parental dynamics. And yeah, I wanted to be honest. And I also wanted to provide conflict to the story. So, you know, you design a character that can provide external conflict while also feeling psychologically honest. And I think that, yeah, it was a release. It was exciting to write the character and to work with Skye.

Glen Dower:

Your IMDb bio says you talk about movies a lot and how they’re therapy for you. Concerning the film, how important is faith to you? Because we get the two sides of faith. We get a toxic side. We also have the redeeming, healing side.

Chris Merola:

You know, I’ve identified as an atheist for probably the past seven years, but I tried to take the faith I was given growing up seriously for a long time, but I ultimately became more of a materialist. I really believe that these experiences, these faith experiences, are profound to people. Religion can be the cause of a lot of good in the world. It can also be the cause of a lot of bad. It’s like a man-made tool, right? So religion and guns are very similar, right? They can be used for really heinous things and maybe less heinous things.

Maybe guns are not a perfect analogy in that sense. But, you know, like I don’t identify with the faith anymore, but I identify with religious thinking in the sense that religious people like to dedicate their lives to something greater than themselves. They try to be humble and not identify with things like wealth or fame as the primary drivers of life. And I find that there is a serious overlap between people who become artists and people who are raised religious or identify as religious because they’re both just so dedicated to what it is they’re doing. I remember growing up, people said like, ‘Oh, I think you might be a priest when you grow up’.

Chris Merola (cont.)

And I didn’t understand why people said that to me. But now I understand, now that I’m older, because in a sense, I’m like a priest for film in that you have to take three vows and you’re a priest and take a vow of poverty, which I put all my money into the film. You have to take a vow of obedience, and I will do whatever the film needs. And you have to take a vow of chastity because it like fucks up every relationship I get into. So, I’m like, I get it now. I get it, you know?

Glen Dower:

Movie priests are like that! That’s very cool. Finally, like we say, we are all about Tribeca right now. How does it feel to be at the festival? What’s been your experience so far?

Chris Merola:

It’s wacky. I try not to think about it too much because it’s really weird. The law of large numbers and low probabilities makes it such that there is no guarantee for any outcome like this. And so I’m just trying not to think about it because it kind of boggles my mind when I think about it. I’m mostly trying to be in the moment and enjoy it because I have a bit of an anxious personality.

So all I’m doing all day is like checking our letterbox to see who’s logging in and like, you know, looking to see if we’ve sold out, and like my anxious mind is like working in overdrive. I’m trying to be in the moment and just enjoy it. I think it’s a challenge to just, yeah, to just exist. And we’ll see if I can do it. I got like six hours of sleep last night because my body woke me up early for this. I was like so hopped up. Yeah.

Glen Dower:

That’s great. Well, my time is up, but it’s been a real pleasure. And like I said, I greatly enjoyed the movie, and I think I’ll rewatch it as many times as I can! 

Chris Merola:

Glen, that’s so sweet of you. I can’t believe you watched it twice. That’s incredibly kind of you. Thank you for taking the time and both to watch the movie twice and to talk to me today. It was such a pleasure.

Lemonade Blessing had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival 2025.

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