You've spent a lot of time thinking and talking about the Lovings. How did you get involved in the feature film?

"When I was creating the documentary, I also felt very strongly that this should be a narrative film as well. Once I'd realized how powerful their story was, it just seemed obvious. So I was talking about the narrative and pitching the narrative the whole time I was working on the documentary. I connected with Colin Firth, who fell in love with the story as well. Once he got involved and brought on his business partner, we were off and running.”

How familiar were you with Jeff Nichols' previous work — movies like Mud and Take Shelter?

"I'd seen every film he had done. It never felt like a stretch at all — he seemed like the obvious person. And then of course, we had to hope that he would want to do it.

"He typically does not direct films that he doesn't write. He wanted to write the script first and make sure that we would all buy into his vision of this. And we did, immediately.”

The performances in Loving by Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton are so striking. Do you think they were both true to what you know about who Richard and Mildred were?

“Oh, they are amazing, frankly. They inhabit those characters. I feel like they channeled the spirit and the tone, the gentleness of this couple, and the quiet that they are. You know, just...their silences speak volumes. Their looks, and the way they connect to each other. I'm just so impressed with it. And every time I see the film I get more and more impressed, and I almost forget my film. I see Roos and Joel in these parts, and I begin to forget the people that I worked with on screen for so many years. I mean, I didn't know the Loving's, by the way, of course, because they were both dead by the time that I started the film. But I felt like I knew them having worked and looked at them and kind of felt their spirit for so many years. But now Joel and Ruth have sort of overtaken that, and they've become the Loving's for me.”

You made the documentary before the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and now, the feature is coming out after. Do you think that impacts the way the Lovings' story is told?

"Both the documentary and the feature are really focused on the couple and their story. In both, we assume that people will intuit from these stories a relationship to the ruling of same-sex marriage. I could have brought that into the documentary, but I chose not to. I just felt like it would almost insult the audience, that they would understand that there's a connection and a relationship.

"We see this in Jeff's movie, too: People immediately associate the Loving's with the larger question of marriage equality. And now that the Loving v. Virginia decision was invoked during the argument for same-sex marriage, more and more people know about it now."