Exclusive Interview
‘All of You’: Brett Goldstein & Imogen Poots Break Down Simon and Laura’s Emotional Ending (VIDEO)
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for All of You.]
Don’t let All of You‘s Simon (Brett Goldstein) and Laura’s (Imogen Poots) jokes fool you: the movie has a sad ending. Or does it?
The Apple TV+ romantic drama puts the duo in an impossible conundrum, as Poots puts it. Set in a not-so-distant future, the best friends — who harbor unspoken feelings for each other — live in a world where a test can determine who their soulmate is. Simon is against the idea entirely, but Laura decides it’s time to find (and marry) her match. Over the next 12 years, we only see the brief moments that Simon and Laura reunite, the former coming back into Laura’s life whenever she needs him.
Once the tension breaks, Simon and Laura’s affair is a constant push-and-pull. Laura can’t bring herself to leave her soulmate, Lukas (Steven Cree). Simon can’t make himself move on, so he takes what little bits of her he can get — until the end. Simon’s on the verge of moving out of the country for work, and they go on one last vacation together. True to form, their last exchange begins with one of their lighthearted bits, but the conversation turns heartbreakingly serious.
They agree that their relationship has given them the highlights of their life, but they know that it won’t work out (at least not now). “I’ll miss you every day,” Simon tells Laura before she returns home, heading back to her family.
Apple TV+
Goldstein, who wrote the film alongside director William Bridges, toyed with a few different versions of the ending before they landed on the final one. “She’s never gonna leave [Lukas],” the actor told Swooon. “She said that. She hasn’t lied. She’s been true to what she told him, and I think in the end he realizes he’s been giving up his life and he constantly is… I think of when he says you’re like heroin to me… It’s amazing when you’re doing it, and it’s terrible when you’re not, and it destroys your life.”
As compelling as Poots found the script — she was thrilled to work on a project with “original ideas rather than regurgitated ones” — she found the ending devastating. “It reads like a novella,” she said in a joint interview with Goldstein. “I really wanted to know what happened with the two of them. The ending, it’s tragic in that way that it sort of should be because it wouldn’t make sense for everything to be solved. Someone’s going to get hurt.”
However, by the time Simon and Laura have gone their separate ways, “they’ve also grown together,” Goldstein pointed out. “I don’t think it’s completely a sad ending,” he continued. “I think the whole final lines is like the first time they say what they mean. And they don’t make a joke of it, and you have this line that’s a joke at the beginning that is now not a joke.”
“I think it’s so sad,” Poots cut in. “You don’t think it’s a sad ending?”
“No, I think it’s devastating. I’m just trying to sell it,” her costar laughed. “Yeah, it’s heartbreaking. I wish it were a happier ending.”
Goldstein’s original point stands, whether or not he meant it. Simon and Laura have come a long way, and isn’t it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Neither of them regret their romance, as viewers know from their final conversation.
There’s also the fact that even though the movie ends there, Simon and Laura’s story might not. “I think in the end [Simon’s] attempting to finally do something for himself, but if that’s what the end is, I don’t know,” Goldstein mused, “It’s up to you. Will they see each other again? I don’t know.”
His cowriter had a similar outlook, adding that they discussed Simon and Laura’s lives beyond where we leave them. After all, they’re still young. “We never talked about that as the very end of their story, but we felt like that was a good, conclusive moment, that they’d both learned something emotionally,” Bridges told Swooon. “They’d both moved on to a certain point.”
Could a follow-up be in the cards then? “I mean, we haven’t really discussed it in concrete terms or anything like that, but I think there’s definitely more of a life there for Simon and Laura,” Bridges noted. “We’ve got another 40 years to go and people bump into each other, and it’s a small world, so maybe. I never say never.”
All of You, Streaming Now, Apple TV+
