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The energy surrounding the Marano sisters this evening is light and bright. The Los Angeles natives have been acting in TV and film since they were children, but this week is major as they are releasing the first film they produced and acted in together, Saving Zoë. "Because we're going to be go-go-go in the next two weeks, I don't think it's going to truly hit us until two weeks from now. But we're like, 'We did it! We put a movie out.' This is a moment of celebration no matter what. This is amazing," Laura exclaims animatedly. In the works for twelve years, Saving Zoë was a way the Marano sisters, plus mom, could harness some control in their careers. "Saving Zoë itself was kinda born out of like, one of us getting fired off of a job; one of us booking a movie that was supposed to be career-changing; and then an investor embezzling money and that film never going; and then getting fired again; and then the writers strikes; and there's no work; and it was just so many things that were like, OK, this isn't going well right now," Vanessa explains, adding that this was before they landed the TV roles they're known for. When Vanessa and Laura's parents realized that these two still wanted to pursue acting, in spite of the myriad setbacks and disappointments the entertainment industry doled out, their mother, Ellen, got proactive."That was the first time my mom went, 'OK, fine. If we're going to do it, we're going to the bookstore. Let's read a bunch of books, and we're going to find one to option and we're going to focus on making that.' We went to Barnes & Noble, picked out a bunch of books with teenage girls on the cover, and Saving Zoë was the one we fell in love with. Twelve years later, here we are. But it's just crazy to think that she was so against it and it wasn't until everything happened to us that she feared: the rejection, the hardship, us sacrificing normal childhood experiences for roles we weren't ultimately going to ever get," says Vanessa. "I missed a whale-watching trip in third grade," Laura quips. Vanessa was 14 and Laura was 11 when the two, along with their mother, decided to pursue the challenge of taking the YA book to the big screen. To say it was a long, arduous process is an understatement. "It's been an insane roller coaster of just like, perseverance, rejection, excitement all of a sudden, rejection again," Vanessa laughs. "And excitement now for this week," adds Laura. "It's finally coming out in America!" The Marano sisters call what happened next, kismet. They reached out to Alyson Noël, the author of Saving Zoë, and requested a meeting. "Alyson is like, 'This is super weird, I was watching you,'" says Vanessa. Coincidentally, Alyson and her husband had recently started watching Gilmore Girls, where Vanessa portrayed Luke's daughter, April. Alyson met with the Marano ladies and ended up giving them the rights to her book. "I think the fact that two siblings were coming forward, and this book spoke to us so much… She just believed in us and worked with us for 10 years," says Laura. The production of this film was such a labor of love that no one was paid —including screenwriters Brian J. Adams and LeeAnne H. Adams, and director, Jeffrey Hunt— until the film was sold and went into production. Saving Zoë was shot in 15 days, edited in about 3 weeks, and took another 2 years to get distributed. What really motivated these ladies to make this film was that no one was really interested in shining a light on what they thought was an important subject: online sexual exploitation. "People kept being like, 'Eh, that's not what your audience wants. Your audience wants light and fluffy.' And I think that pushed us even more to be like, No, we're going to keep going then. We're going to make this personal because…" says Vanessa. "We are our audience!" Laura exclaims. "Yeah, we believed so much in the story. It is a story about young women, for young women, told by a mother-and-two-daughter producing team," says Vanessa. "Our hope really is that mothers and daughters can sit down and watch this and have a conversation afterwards. But the fact that people were scared and didn't want to talk about the subject and were like, 'Eh, there's no place for this in the film world.' We were like, Alright, that means we absolutely have to keep going and have to get it made, because if people don't want to talk about it, that means we should be talking about it."