I watch so many movies that only a select few get me misty-eyed, but one of the 2026 movie releases that really gets me there is Reminders Of Him. The film -- based on a novel by Colleen Hoover -- had me emotional over the journey Maika Monroe’s Kenna goes on after re-entering the real world in the aftermath of a six-year prison stint. Adding to the drama is the fact that Maika has never even met her own daughter due to her jail time. It’s a dramatic premise, but when I talked to the cast, I learned that Taylor Swift's music added some sweet vibes behind the scenes.
If you’ve seen Reminders Of Him already, I don’t have to tell you how adorable the child actor in the movie is. And, according to lead actress Maika Monroe, Zoe Kosovic really livened things up for everyone, too. In her words:
She quite literally was a bright light on set. She loved Taylor Swift, so we'd have Taylor Swift dance parties every time she was there.
While I’d expect such a book-to-screen adaptation to have a more somber set, that wasn’t the case. thanks to the actress who played Kenna’s daughter, Diem. As a big Swiftie, she got the cast dancing around to her music, which sounds like a great on-set ritual. She also got especially close to the actor who played Ledger, Tyriq Withers. Monroe said the pair were “besties,"and Withers added this during our interview with them:
She didn't know my name. It was not Tyriq. It is Ledger…It's still Ledger.
Given the child actor is just six years old, it’s certainly understandable she might get the actors’ names and characters mixed up, but hearing about it just makes you want to go “awww!” Check out the two actors -- who play out Reminders Of Him's main romance -- gush about Kosovic in the video below:
It sounds like the young actor really brightened up everyone’s day when she was on set in an otherwise serious film. Lauren Graham, who plays Grace, Diem’s grandma, also says this:
It's kind of unbelievable that she exists, and is very lovely and a sweet kid, but like, so excited and so happy to be there. And, she got sad at the end of the day. It was like ‘We gotta go home.’ And she was like, ‘No, I love it.’ And I had scenes with her in the car and we'd be there for long periods of time and she never complained.
In Reminders Of Him, Kenna returns to her hometown, after pleading guilty for vehicular manslaughter in the wake of her boyfriend, Scotty, dying in a car accident. While Scotty's parents and Diem's grandparents won’t let Kenna meet her daughter, Scotty’s best friend, Ledger, starts to get to know Kenna and realizes she might not be the criminal she's been painted as.
Reminders of Him may have left critics calling it “predictable,” it was a crowd-pleaser when it came out earlier this year. And, if you’ve seen the film, you know how emotional the ending gets. I love the cast's behind-the-scenes stories about the making of this Hoover adaptation and, now, I’m eager to start a Taylor Swift dance party of my own.
