Glen Powell says making 'Twisters' was 'emotionally meaningful' thanks to relationship with Bill Paxton

Twisters stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones know fans of the original film are eagerly awaiting to see what this stand-alone sequel is all about. As fans of the original Twister (1996) themselves, Powell told Yahoo Entertainment "it's a movie that obviously we all care about." The actor said his relationship with late actor Bill Paxton, who starred with Helen Hunt in the disaster thriller, helped make this experience emotionally fulfilling.

"I think that's made this thing even more meaningful," Powell said. "[Twister] is a movie that really meant a lot to me as a kid, you know, growing up in Texas, it's a movie that felt very ... just very much a story of kind of the community I grew up around and the people I grew up around."

In 2013, Powell and Paxton co-starred in Red Wing. Paxton died in 2017 due to complications from surgery.

"I think just knowing Bill and knowing how much this movie meant to him, and how he saw the world differently afterward, and then having his son James Paxton in this movie and shooting that sequence with him and hearing stories about Bill — it all grounds it in a way that's hard to describe," Powell said. (James Paxton makes a cameo as a motel guest.)

Powell plays Tyler in the modern-day disaster film, a charismatic storm chaser and social media influencer. Think cowboy scientist. He links up with Edgar-Jones's character Kate, a meteorologist and former storm chaser. Kate is almost a mix of Paxton and Hunt's roles from Twister. Although she didn't talk with Hunt about making this film, the British actress told Yahoo that she drew much inspiration from the original characters.

"First of all, I'm from London, I needed all the storm chaser research I could get, and watching the original, they capture the essence of just the joy of [storm] chasing and also the kind of camaraderie and community behind it," she said. "Watching [Twister] was so helpful."

The Normal People star has "watched it so many times at this point" she thinks it's brilliant.

"I definitely think Kate as a character, when you first meet her, she has all that joy that the original cast has when they chase. But she's marked by something quite extreme," Edgar-Jones continued. "And so her journey's a little more introspective and through her relationship with Tyler, she comes back to that joy of chasing. It was so fun to track that arc. But yeah, there's a lot of love for the original in our film."

Powell added, "It's really the wish fulfillment of this business when you can make entertainment emotionally meaningful to yourself and to everyone. It's a beautiful thing when it happens."

Twisters storms into theaters on July 19.