In a press junket covered by The Hollywood Reporter, Steven Spielberg spoke about the massive responsibility that came with writing “The Fabelmans,” one that he first thought he could handle but eventually began to loom over him:

“I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it turned out to be because I’ve certainly known the material and all the characters for my entire life. And yet I found this to be, for me, a very daunting experience because I was attempting in a semi-empirical way to recreate huge recollections, not only in my life but in the lives of my three sisters and my mother and father, who are no longer with us. Just the responsibility of that began to build.”

It’s hard to imagine what it would be like from Spielberg’s perspective to recreate some of your most personal and meaningful memories on a movie set. “The Fabelmans” is filled with deeply emotional moments, and if you found it emotionally taxing to watch, Spielberg had just as hard of a time shooting it:

“As the cast knows, this was, emotionally, a very difficult experience. Not all of it, but some of it was really, really hard to get through.”

Oftentimes efforts that are worthwhile feel hard to go through, and Spielberg telling this story is no exception. As emotionally challenging as making this movie was, Spielberg got a new sense of urgency to tell this story when the world shut down because of the pandemic.