Nick Jonas makes his feature film debut in Careful What You Wish For, a steamy thriller that sees him play a young man who becomes involved in a tempestuous relationship with his neighbor’s (Dermot Mulroney) wife, Lena (Isabel Lucas) over the course of a summer. Directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum, the film is a fun romp that ought to kickstart the summer in an entertaining fashion. We spoke to the director about her work with Nick Jonas, girl power and more.

The movie was a lot of fun, it reminded me of being a teenager and seeing movies over the summer. Was this the spirit you wanted to recreate?

Yeah, I guess there’s a bit of nostalgia in it because it’s set in a vacation community where they set aside their computers and smartphones for a minute, so life is happening at a slower pace. That’s semi-intentional, because computers and phones aren’t very cinematic or sexy.

Did you have any specific summer memories that helped shape the film?

You can almost smell those summers! The times when you had no responsibilities, I can barely remember those days. I grew up near the water in Long Island, so there was a lot of canoeing and that kind of thing.

You’ve done much more TV work than film, how did this come to happen?

On average it’s such so hard to get a greenlight on mid-level budget movies these days. My movies for studios are about $12 million each, this one was even lower than that. It’s taken each of my movies three years to get off the ground, it’s a very long process. I never set out to be a TV director, I did my short film, and then I got my first feature and I remember being in Australia and asking a friend “what happens first, do you yell action?” I needed some flight hours in the cockpit, so I took on TV. It’s such a rigorous schedule and it keeps you exercising, you meet new crews, hone your craft. TV forces you to be instinctual, so it’s a great thing to do in between, not only for financial reasons but to exercise.

Is your work with actors different in each medium?

In general television actors, unless it’s a pilot episode, have to be extremely protective and self-sufficient because they’re getting different input every week from different directors. They know their characters and have to protect that, so it’s a bit less hands on. You are responsible for the performances, but you approach it more subtly. I like doing first seasons because actors are still finding their things and you get to work with them on that.

You’ve worked with many first timers like Nick Jonas and JoJo. How does this end happening?

When I started my career I was a 30 year old female director, there were few and far between, so when people were doing teenage girl films I’d be on top of the list. I’m very grateful, because many of my peers at film school didn’t get films off the ground, and I did because of that genre. There’s not many Brad Pitts or Jennifer Anistons in that world, because no one’s established themselves, so we have to pool people from music, Disney or Nickelodeon. It’s also a big responsibility because I need to work on the character arcs with them, because I have to work with people who had never done movies before.

Your films are also usually about girl power, even this one! The damsel in distress is not necessarily who we thought.

It’s funny you say that because we changed some characters to encourage that. I guess I wanted even more girl power. In Aquamarine too, when I came on board the mermaid was looking for love with a lifeguard, and ultimately she gets it, but I was like “screw that” and I had her fall in love with the girl who found her. I always change things to fit my larger agenda in the world. Most of my TV projects too, if there’s a doctor, a lawyer or something like that I ask them to open this to gender neutral casting.

Isabel Lucas’ character is a femme fatale, did you have her watch Lana Turner movies or anything like that?

A little bit. Unlike the Sharon Stones, Kathleen Turners and Lana Turners, who are more stylized, I didn’t think this would work to seduce a 19 year old boy, so I wanted her to be softer and she brought that to the table. She’s a very warm person, so we worked with her essence.

Thanks for having so many scenes where Nick takes off his shirt.

(Laughs)

It’s so great he’s so comfortable knowing he’s being objectified by women and gay men.

He’s such an open person in general. He appreciates and finds the beauty in people, so he blurs those lines a little bit. When we cast him he was 18, he was 19 when we shot it and we had him take his shirt off, but then he started doing it all the time and I was like “stop doing that until the movie comes out! We need it to be novel!” It took us a long time to find a distributor, so he’s taken everything off by now (laughs).

Careful What You Wish For is now in theaters and iTunes.