Charlie McDowell Says Working with Wife Lily Collins Is ‘Really Special’ (Exclusive)

Charlie McDowell can’t get enough of working with his wife Lily Collins. 

On Sunday, Oct. 27, the filmmaker, 41, spoke exclusively with PEOPLE about his collaborations with Collins, 35, at the American Film Institute Fest premiere of his upcoming movie The Summer Book at TCL Chinese Theater in Los Angeles.

“Lily and I have an amazing relationship as a couple and then that always bleeds into a working relationship,” McDowell says, before mentioning their production company Case Study Films and saying it was born out of them thinking, “We’re talking about this stuff anyway. Let’s do it together.”

“Whatever story we’re telling, it is really exciting to be able to work and be creative with your partner,” he adds. “It’s a really special experience.”

The two are collaborating on the Hulu limited series Razzlekhan: The Infamous Crocodile of Wall Street about cybercrime couple Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan, according to Deadline. The Emily in Paris actress will star and co-produce the film with Alex Orlovsky, while McDowell will direct it.

The couple previously worked together on the 2022 crime thriller Windfall, which McDowell and Collins starred in.

Recalling those early days of collaborating, the director says, “I think we just jumped in and figured it out as we went along, and it was great.”

As for how working together has impacted their personal relationship, McDowell adds, “People were warning [us] and all these things, and we didn’t know what to expect. It ended up being a really great experience and brought us closer together.”

McDowell and Collins first sparked dating rumors in July 2019 before getting engaged in 2020. They tied the knot a year later.

His latest movie, The Summer Book, is a drama about a young girl and her grandmother spending the summer together after suffering a monumental loss. The movie, starring Glenn Close, is adapted from a popular Finnish novel by Tove Jansson. 

McDowell says that he was inspired to adapt the work during the COVID-19 pandemic after he revisited the novel and it helped him connect “to my love of people and relationships, as well as my connection to this planet and to nature.”

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He continues, “I felt like it did that in a really profound way and not an overly sentimental way, and so it just kept living somewhere in my brain.”

The filmmaker notes that “They’d been trying to make the film” for a long time and credits Close for helping them “really get it off the ground.”

The Summer Book is currently playing in theaters.