In some circles, Liz Tuccillo is regarded as a dating guru; known for her work as story editor on the seminal HBO show Sex and the City and her bestselling books He’s Just Not That Into You (co-written with Greg Behrendt) and How to Be Single, she has become a wise goddess of relationships who has been able to identify patterns and trends about the way in which modern people approach the complex world of romance. Because of her notoriety as a relationship know-it-all, I couldn’t help but tell her how in my college years, I would get together with friends and we would consult our Sex and the City DVDs in hopes of finding answers to our predicaments. “Like pin the tale on the donkey Sex and the City style!” she cleverly points out.

Now, Tuccillo is making her debut as a film director with Take Care, a charming romantic comedy set mostly in the New York apartment of Frannie (Leslie Bibb) who after being hit by a car is sent home with a leg cast. With enough time on her hands to last her two lifetimes she realizes she hasn’t been the best of people and reaches out to her ex-boyfriend Devon (Thomas Sadoski) who is now in a relationship with another woman. Beyond the “will they or won’t they” takes the story might turn, Take Care is a great showcase for Tuccillo to display her ability to write characters that can deliver sassy zingers while containing fully fleshed out emotional inner lives.

I talked to the multi-talented Tuccillo about Take Care, how the dating landscape has changed in the last few years and of course about Sex and the City.

When people realize who you are do they randomly come up to you and ask you for dating advice?

It used to be like that all the time, when the book had just come out people would at parties would want to talk about their relationships, about guys they were dating and what I thought about them, when I was writing for Sex and the City people would stop me at weddings and parties and they’d want to talk about their sex lives with me (laughs).

You drew inspiration to write the screenplay for Take Care from your friendship with Nadia Dajani (who plays Bibb's sister in the film) and I remember seeing her play many parts along the years, so I was really curious about how you two met…

Oh my gosh, I’ve known her for over thirty years. We met scooping ice cream together in the West Village. She was actually an ice cream scooper and I made the ice cream. I lived for a while with her mother during a time where I didn’t have a place to live or any money, so her mother took me into her apartment, so we’ve been entwined, and Nadia is the one who introduced me to Michael Patrick King who was the showrunner of Sex and the City, he hired me and the rest is history. So if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be anywhere right now.

Was it strange for you and Nadia to see a situation you’d lived in real life played by actors?

By the time the movie was done, Nadia felt very removed from the post-surgery situation, and because it was inspired by it, but not actually taken from her life, she was fine with it.

As someone who’s broken his legs three times…

No!

Yes. In a very masochistic way, I loved how you captured the powerlessness of not being able to do anything on your own.

Yeah, Leslie was great about that. She did a lot of research, we worked with a physical therapist Carolyn Mazur to teach us about the different kinds of braces Leslie would use and how she would move, how she’d feel. We did a lot of work on that.

Even though Frannie is in a very sad situation, she’s not very likable and I can actually testify to how when you’re helpless, you can become a monster with people trying to help you. As a writer, how do you approach showing the so-called uglier sides of a character?

That’s always a note you get when you’re writing, especially if you’re writing for other people, everyone’s always worried that a character won’t be likable. Someone is always bound to mention it, so with this it was a concern, because on the page she can seem needy or annoying, but that’s why it was so important to cast the right actors, because you needed someone to root for, who was also funny and strong, tough and slightly crazy. It was difficult to cast, which is why I was so lucky to get Leslie who does all of these things.

I also liked how you presented the character of Kyle (Michael Stahl-David), who could’ve easily just been a “douche bag”, but we learn is nothing like that at all. Were you purposely trying to subvert all these preconceptions we might have about the characters?

I think Kyle for example is just saying what everybody thinks, which is “please don’t bother me, I’m busy”. I never thought of him as being a douchebag, as much as just someone who speaks the truth, pointing out how selfish people are and how we all want to get through the day.

I thought a lot about that Sex and the City episode where Miranda throws out her back and Aidan has to come rescue her…were you thinking at all about that episode when you wrote Take Care?

(Laughs) No, I wasn’t but Sex and the City also touched a lot about what it meant to be alone, there’s also an episode where Miranda almost chokes and she has to give herself the Heimlich maneuver and that terrifies her about being single, there’s also an episode where Samantha is sick and for the first time she was sort of scared about being alone, cause no one of those men she’d been having sex with wanted to actually bring her soup. It didn’t last long for her though…

How do you feel about the fact that your work also resonates so much with gay men?

It’s fantastic! There’s actually a line Samantha says which is “first the gays, then the girls” because gay men have the taste and always know what’s gonna happen next, but that’s a horrible generalization. But of course I think it’s great when any group of people likes what you’re doing, or when a single person likes what you’re doing. It’s an incredible compliment.

You’ve become a dating anthropologist in a way, which made me wonder what do you think is the biggest change you’ve seen in these years?

Obviously, it’s the technology. It’s just changed everything, it’s amazing that we went from online dating which was very popular and now we’re on Tinder and I don’t know what the next one is going to be, but it seems that now all the dating traditions and trends are going to be shown by the technology.

As a writer how do you feel about the fact that sites like OKCupid and even Tinder to a degree actually require that people write and put thought into their words?

Well, I did find that incredibly interesting about people writing their personal ad and how difficult it was for most people to write about themselves, even for a writer it’s a hard thing to do. But then it seems like that’s now also gone and it’s now all about Tinder where you don’t have to do any of that because I guess people didn’t really like doing that.

I recently talked to a director who said ideally a first feature film should be set in an apartment to give the filmmaker the space to play and develop their craft, which is what you do in your film, but at the same time, we associate your work with New York so much, that I just felt like the camera was dying to leave and go out to the streets…

Yeah, I always knew that in the end, even if it had to be in the credits, she’d be outside. The whole point of the film was to see this relationship blossom within the confines of the apartment. I also was sort of inspired by my nicest memories of falling in love with people, which always seem to happen in the apartment. My memories of being alone with someone and staying up late, laughing...mainly my memories about falling in love are about spending a lot of time alone indoors.

It obviously reminded me of Carrie’s apartment and also Holly Golightly’s and how even though we love NYC, our apartments are our sanctuaries…

Yup, especially if you’re recovering from an illness, your apartment takes on the feeling of being this place where you will get better.

I’m very interested in your #indiefilmaday project on Twitter, how did that come to happen?

I have very conflicted feelings about all the self-promotion that’s going on in social media, and of course you know you have to do it because that’s what it’s there for and it would be stupid not to do it, but there’s still something you get from growing up with the feeling that it’s not polite to brag, that’s still in me. I felt very conflicted about going into this process feeling like I should tweet about my film every second, so I decided that if I’m going to do that, I might as well at least give other people props for the work that they have done. I decided to temper my own egomaniacal postings, and do shoutouts to great films I’ve been seeing.

What’s on your queue?

I’ve been doing some classics, so next I’ll be doing a film by Lynn Shelton, one of Clark Gregg’s films, I just watched Carrie Preston’s That’s What She Said, which is about three women having a crazy day in New York...so yeah, I’m also going to catch up with more current works!

Take Care will be available on VOD, iTunes, and in select theaters on December 5th.