For his film about death, Pedro Almodóvar knew Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore would breathe life into“ The Room Next Door”

The Spanish auteur speaks to EW about casting his leading stars ("they were my first choice") and mining mortality in his first English-language feature film.

For his new film about coming to terms with death, Pedro Almodóvar was dead set on Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore bringing the story to life.

The Academy Award winners play old friends who reconnect under unusual circumstances in The Room Next Door, the Spanish auteur's forthcoming debut English-language feature film. Adapted from the Sigrid Nunez novel What Are You Going Through, the dramedy follows Moore’s Ingrid, a bestselling novelist who learns that her old pal Martha (Swinton), a war correspondent, is dying from cancer. Their friendship rekindled, Martha proposes a favor: She intends to rent a home someplace tranquil and self-euthanize, but is fearful at the thought of departing this world alone — would Ingrid consider staying in the room next door?

In Entertainment Weekly's exclusive sneak peek at the film above, Ingrid pays a visit to Martha in her hospital room in New York, where the two discuss the latter’s waning days and marvel over the abnormal pink of the snowflakes trickling just outside the window. It was this particular hospital-set chapter in the novel that inspired an uncertain Almodóvar to adapt the material into a film — immediately he envisioned Swinton, whom he last collaborated with on his 2020 short The Human Voice, as Martha.

Related: Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton probe friendship and death in pensive The Room Next Door

“We became very close friends,” Almodóvar recalls of that experience to EW on a recent October morning Zoom call. “I really wanted to work with her again.” Though he had never directed Moore, he has been eager to, citing  “something very peculiar” and “unique” about the star. “They were my first choice,” he says. “I sent them my script and fortunately they were enthusiastic.”

Almodóvar always knew he’d one day make an English feature film. It was upon completion of the script that the circumstances finally felt right; the material, he surmises, felt richer within the context of the culture. “Every moment that I ask for the rights of a novel, I try — in Julieta, for example — to adapt to Spanish society. I didn't want to do this in this case,” says Almodóvar. “In Spain, we have a law of euthanasia. It’s legal so you can do it with the assistance of a doctor. It's not the situation like in the United States where there is a big debate. I think it's worthy of debate because it's human. I think the person has the right to her or his own life.”

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With Ingrid particularly, the filmmaker was drawn to her naivete when it came to the subject matter. “Ingrid doesn't really understand death and mortality and doesn't really accept it,” he observes. "For me, it is a kind of immaturity, the fact of not recognizing death."

After all, and as the saying goes, death is all around us, and Almodóvar has even said that he felt its presence "very strongly" while filming. “All you have to do is turn on the television and learn that somebody's died, whether it's an accidental death or in a war zone,” he elaborates. "Even just today I turned on the news, I learned that 93 people have died in Gaza, and so we are surrounded by any number of deaths, be they accidental or in wars in Ukraine or Palestine and Israel. This is something that happens continuously."

Related: Parallel Mothers' Penélope Cruz says Pedro Almodóvar has 'no filters': It's 'so refreshing'

English or not, the film contains all the brush strokes of what has come to define Almodóvar’s oeuvre, such as the vibrant melodrama and expansion of what he has called his “cinema of women.” “I prefer to tell stories of women, and I don’t fight against that preference of mine,” he says. “There is something about the female universe and the way that women react to things in ways that sometimes men can't. Dealing with a topic like what I'm dealing with in this film, the female reaction is always going to be more expressive."

Adds the filmmaker, "Even now, you could also say that there's a lot of movies about men in their 60s, whereas there's not quite as many films about women in their 60s, and this is a corrective that I'm trying to make. I do think that the universe of women, dramatically speaking, is a richer universe.”

The Room Next Door opens Dec. 20 in select theaters and nationwide on Jan. 17.