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Yong

Yong Chavez

ABS-CBN News North America

<div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ve_pWpDnHgU?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span><br/></div><p>Hollywood press days are usually a blur of waiting-room hallways, timed smiles, and junket production staff watching the clock. But on a recent morning inside one of Netflix’s offices, there was an unusual calm to the proceedings. Almost as though the cheerful parts of the animated realm of &quot;In Your Dreams&quot; had seeped out of the film and into its makers.</p><p>In the movie, Simu Liu voices Michael, a suburban dad whose artistic dreams refuse to die quietly. When I observed how rare it is to see in an animated film a father who clings to his creativity instead of shelving it for practicality, Liu brightened, as though the question touched a part of him most people don’t ask about. </p><p>“Every actor, really, anyone who works in the arts, we’re all dreamers,” he said. “We all know that feeling of not wanting to give up, even when the world is telling us to. And especially when that world includes your spouse. A couple of interviewers have asked: How do you feel about Michael not being present as a father? And that always strikes me because I don’t see it that way. I think he’s a great father. Him and his wife maybe have different ideas on how to show up as a parent. But I think you need a dreamer, because kids need to know they can be anything they want.”</p><p>That philosophy, dreaming as a form of parenting, hit me harder because I personally knew what he meant.</p><div> </div><div><strong>Dreaming with one foot in the real world</strong></div><p>As he talks, I’m pulled back to the version of me who grew up believing entertainment journalism was a faraway possibility — something meant for other people, not for an impoverished girl who fell in love young, started a family early, and built a life before she built a dream.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1763714641501In_Your_Dreams_u_00_06_18_09.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Michael, voiced by Simu Liu, in &#x27;In Your Dreams.&#x27; <em>Netflix</em></span></span></span></div><p>My early 20s were spent in a flurry of diapers, double shifts, and late-night rides home. When I eventually came to America, I arrived with very little resources but a willingness to work hard, and a dream that had refused to die, no matter how many practicalities demanded it go quietly.</p><p>It is echoed in Liu’s character’s musician story, and it fits right into the actor’s thesis.</p><p>“In Michael’s mind, he’s like: If I give up on my dreams, what example does that set for my kids?” he said. “Of course there’s sacrifice, but why sacrifice the thing that’s most important to us? Our dreams?”</p><p>When I asked Liu whether he was surprised by Michael’s teddy-bear physique, he laughed.</p><p>“I was definitely surprised,” he said. “I kind of loved it. Obviously I cannot play a character like that in real life unless you give me a lot of time and a lot of ice cream. But I think it shows all parents are heroes. They come in all different shapes and sizes.”</p><p>He added, with a grin, that when he saw the finished design, “It’s like, ahhh, that’s what you meant.”</p><p>Cristin Milioti, meanwhile, plays Michael’s counterpart, a woman whose childhood dreams have shifted into new ones centered on her family.</p><p>“I related to the fact that our dreams and aspirations change,” she told me. “If my kid self saw where I am now, I’m sure there are things she’d think were amazing and other things where she’d be like, really? Those moments can be difficult to navigate. You’re like, I thought it was this thing the whole time. And now it’s this. It’s just very human.”</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1763714606698In_Your_Dreams_u_00_52_49_21.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Mom, voiced by Cristin Milioti, in &#x27;In Your Dreams.&#x27; <em>Netflix</em></span></span></span></div><p>In a family film, that level of honesty feels radical. Most animated moms are either saintly or invisible. &quot;In Your Dreams’&quot; Mom is neither; she is simply human: someone who is like many of us at one point: struggling, loving, trying.</p><p>We spoke about the nightmare sequences and what her worst nightmare might be. Milioti quickly and honestly responded: “Probably someone I’m scared of telling me something I don’t want to hear but know to be true.”</p><p>If the film’s emotional backbone lies with the parents, its heart comes from the kids: Jolie Huang-Rappaport and Elias Janssen. Both recalled auditioning over Zoom during the pandemic. Jolie did hers in her closet.</p><p>Huang-Rappaport remembered learning she got the role in the middle of a piano lesson. “My mom interrupted and told me I got the job,” she said, laughing.</p><p>Craig Robinson, who voices Baloney Tony, couldn’t wait to bring his trademark warmth to the role.</p><p>“When I saw him, I thought: this is too funny,” Robinson said. “I couldn’t wait to hear my voice come out of him.”</p><p>And yes, Robinson understands Liu’s character’s juggling act all too well.</p><p>“I was a school teacher before I came out to LA,” he said. “I was teaching during the day and doing comedy at night. Burning the candle at both ends. But I had this passion, so I had to feed that.”</p><p>Both kids lit up when they talked about director Alex Woo.</p><p>“Alex was great to work with,” Janssen said. “You could tell he was really passionate.”</p><p>Huang-Rappaport added, “He’s become like a mentor. He even wrote my letter of recommendation to college. I’m going to his alma mater, NYU.”</p><p>The love between director and young actors mirrors the film’s insistence that kids flourish when someone believes in them.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1763714570339DSC_9527_gUVxvArh.JPG" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">The cast of &#x27;In Your Dreams.&#x27; <em>Netflix</em></span></span></span></div><p>What makes &quot;In Your Dreams&quot; unexpectedly tender is that it doesn’t treat dreams as childish fluff. It treats them as essential: whether you’re a kid navigating monsters under the bed or a parent trying to remember who you were before the mortgage, the traffic, the school pick up.</p><p>As I left Netflix that day, I realized why this film felt personal. The parents’ struggles mirrored my own as the young woman who postponed her dream, the mother who carried it across an ocean anyway, the immigrant who worked three jobs but still wrote stories at midnight because something inside refused to dim. </p><p>Dreams don’t care if you’re tired. They don’t expire when you become someone’s parent. They wait until you gather the courage to chase them. And &quot;In Your Dreams,&quot; in part, felt to me like a love letter to that chase.</p><p>Liu said it best to explain his character: “If I give up on my dreams, what example does that set for my kids?”</p><p>My own family watched me chase mine, even when it looked impossible, even when it was inconvenient. They saw me become the woman my younger self once imagined.</p><p>And this tender, funny, visually gorgeous film reminds us that the best thing we can give our kids isn’t perfection but the permission to dream.</p><div><br/></div><div><em>Here in Hollywood comes out every Friday. Have a question about Hollywood celebrities? Contact Yong on Instagram: @yongchavez</em></div>

<p>Netflix’s '<i>In Your Dreams'</i> brings together Simu Liu, Cristin Milioti, and breakout young actors for a family film that treats creativity and ambition with surprising honesty, celebrating parents who lead by example and kids who dare to dream.</p>

Netflix’s ' In Your Dreams' brings together Simu Liu, Cristin Milioti, and breakout young actors for a family film that treats creativity and ambition with surprising honesty, celebrating parents who lead by example and kids who dare to dream.

Here in Hollywood: ‘In Your Dreams’ cast on the real-life dreams they didn’t give up on

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Here in Hollywood: ‘In Your Dreams’ cast on the real-life dreams they didn’t give up on

Yong Chavez,

ABS-CBN News North America

Published Nov 21, 2025 05:29 PM PHT

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Here in Hollywood

Yong Chavez

Netflix

In Your Dreams

Simu Liu

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