INTERVIEW: Miranda Rae Hart is Off to the Races on Her Directorial Debut
*This article originally appeared on the cover of our October 2025 issue*
Photo by Gregory Wallace
“No shame to all the beautiful stories that are darker, or more complex, but I really wanted to bring unabashed, female joy to the screen.”
Miranda Rae Hart, like so many upstate kids, spent her summers going to the track. Every August, the whole family would take the 30-minute trip north on I-87 from Albany to Saratoga for Travers Weekend. They’d shack up at the Adelphi Hotel downtown and while her father was entertaining clients, she would join her mother and brothers on the town, collecting all of the quintessential track season experiences, from couples fighting outside of bars on Caroline Street to the Victorian-inspired women in big dressy hats.
Upon graduating from Albany Academy, she moved down to New York City to attend The New York University Tisch School of the Arts and enrolled in the cinema studies program. At 19, she dropped out and moved out to the bright lights of Hollywood to pursue her acting career. Through all of these travels and life changes, one thing remained constant: the family tradition of August weekends spent at the track.
When it came time to make her debut feature film, it was only fitting that she returned to the place where so many formative experiences took place. Off to the Races, a romantic comedy set during track season in Saratoga, is that debut feature film. What follows is the story of its conception, including how a group of Capital Region artists came back home to make it.
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“Ever since I was six, all I knew of the track was the huge hats,” Hart, the director, writer and lead actress of Off to the Races, said. “I have these very dressed up, almost Victorian memories of Saratoga, and then the older I got, I realized it’s only 30 minutes away from Albany.
“Then it became, let me go drink with my friends up there, or go to SPAC and see Dave Matthews. It became a place that held all of these formative, Upstate New York experiences.”
During her time in Los Angeles, the pandemic hit and was quickly followed by the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023. Hart found that she had all of these words bumbling around her head and decided to start writing.
“First, I wrote a novel that was like 400 pages, but when that was finished I had so much excess energy. ‘Where am I going to put it?’” she questioned herself.
Through her friend, the LA-based comedian Dennis Curlett, she joined a writer’s workshop and took a shot at writing screenplays. The first was a teenage coming-of-age film that took place on a road trip. A great idea, but too expensive for a debut feature film. The second screenplay was Love in the Time of Reagan, which explored the politics of the ‘80s through the lens of the yuppies versus the punks. It sought to capture all of the dancing and crazy energy of the time period. Another great idea, but also too expensive. Then, the idea came to her.
Two years prior, during one of her family’s August sojourns, she began to realize the inherent drama of a place like Saratoga during track season.
“I started to notice all of these weird characters and happenings that were going on,” Hart recalled. “I’m walking down Caroline Street and there are couples fighting outside of bars, there’s another guy who just lost a bunch of money and then over here there are all of these celebrities in town for the races.
“I didn’t know what the story was, but I felt my spidey senses tingling. I was going to these parties and there was always jazz music playing and it felt like this was a place that was stuck in time—in a fun way, not in a scary way. It felt like a Katharine Hepburn movie.”
She took those experiences and pitched the half-baked idea to her screenwriting class. She wasn’t quite sure whether it was a family drama, a rom-com or some kind of hybrid, but her class loved the idea, so she got to work on completing the screenplay.
Inspired by the screwball comedies of the ‘30s and ‘40s that her mom had always talked with her about—It Happened One Night and His Girl Friday, for example—she started writing the story of an eccentric writer who returns home for the first time in years. Upon her arrival, she sees her nemesis from high school, a jock with whom she has an “I hate you, but I love you” kind of chemistry with. From there, hijinks ensue, as is wont to do in a romantic comedy.
However, standard, modern rom-com fare this is not. Hart sought to imbue the film with a real sense of time and place by calling on the vernacular of the period she found Saratoga to be so reminiscent of.
“I think we’ve had so many productive conversations about women and equality in Hollywood, but at the same time, have you seen the books we read?” Hart posited. “Like, what happened to these 1940s guys that were actually a formidable opponent for the woman? I missed that in cinema, and I really thought we could reinvent that feeling for 2025.”
So while the eccentric female lead is hurling insults like, ‘You sex-crazed, black hearted, vermin scum!’, her nemesis—the modern jock—is standing there with a perplexed look of ‘Why the fuck are you talking like that?’
She had her idea. She had a unique perspective on how to tell the story. And as fate would have it, she had a location where she could shoot it.
After grappling with feelings of imposter syndrome about being the Albany family that buys property in Saratoga, the Hart family finally broke and purchased a home on Circular Street in downtown Saratoga Springs. With a small budget film, it’s important to be thrifty – now Hart didn’t have to spend resources on securing a filming location. Getting this script made was starting to become a reality. It was time to assemble her team.
Photo by Gregory Wallace
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There’s a great storytelling trope in movies where a large number of characters are introduced in rapid fire succession. Usually the character doing the explaining is in voiceover while a montage of shots set to some upbeat music shows all of the characters they’re talking about. When there is an ensemble cast, it’s a really efficient way to dump a bunch of character information on the audience without stalling the momentum of the film.
For instance, in Con Air, John Cusack, playing U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin, does this exact thing where he introduces all of the convicts that are flying on the plane with our hero Cameron Poe (played by Nicolas Cage). Poe is also a convict, but let’s be honest – he was unfairly sentenced by a judge on a power trip. As all the convicts are walking off the transport bus, Larkin gives the rundown on the convicts with menacing sounding names like “Billy Bedlam,” “Diamond Dog” and “Cyrus the Virus.” He’s talking to a DEA agent who is going undercover on the plane, but really he’s talking to all of us in the audience. Con Air is really quite silly, but also it’s a perfect action movie.
Since this is a story about movies, we’re going to borrow this little story telling trope. Except, rather than a bunch of convicts, we’re going to introduce the litany of Capital Region figures that are involved in Hart’s Off to the Races. In keeping with her inspiration from ‘30s and ‘40s films, let’s imagine that it’s set to a big band classic from the era. The Billy Strayhorn tune “Take the A Train” performed by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra sounds like a great song to soundtrack this. Got it in your head yet? Good. Let’s do this.
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First, Hart needed to find a producer to help get the film made. Enter, Janek Ambros.
Ambros is a fellow Albany native and Albany Academy alumnae whose earliest memory as a human being was watching Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs. Fitting that Ambros signed on to produce Hart’s script inspired by screwball comedies.
Upon graduating from high school, Ambros attended Siena College before moving to Los Angeles and founding his own production company, Assembly Line Entertainment. Through his production company, Ambros has produced films of his own, including 2019’s Mondo Hollywoodland (Hart acted in this film), as well as films from other independent filmmakers. In the Summers, a coming-of-age film written and directed by Alessandra Lacorazza and produced by Ambros, won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
While Ambros has found success producing films in Los Angeles, he hasn’t forgotten where he came from.
“Whenever I hear about anyone from Albany coming out to LA, I try to throw any and all of my resources at them,” Ambros said. “I really want to see the Capital Region grow in Hollywood.
“I know this sounds cliche, but [Miranda] really has a unique voice and that’s hard to find. My background is in writing scripts and through my production company, I read a lot of different scripts and I hadn’t read anything this good in a while.”
Next, Hart needed to find a lead actor—the Clark Gable to her Carole Lombard. She found Lucas Aurelio who “has eyes you could just swim in.”
Aurelio is another fellow Albany native. He attended Albany High and later, college at Russell Sage in Troy where he studied musical theater and played on the soccer team. Through his mother, who was born in Spain, he was able to obtain an EU passport and took a leap of faith by moving to London after earning his degree. Among his numerous acting credits, Aurelio has appeared on Netflix’s Bridgerton and The Witcher.
While Aurelio's character in the film is “pretty questionable,” he concurred with Ambros that the script had a unique style. It was also an opportunity to give back to the Capital Region community that helped raise him.
“When I first agreed to do this, I saw a lot of potential about what this area has to offer,” Aurelio said. “Miranda bringing her initiative and talent back to this area was kind of a no-brainer for me to get on board.”
Producer: check. Romantic lead actor: check. Now Hart needed someone to shoot this damn thing. Say hello to Alex Hass.
Hass is—you guessed it—another Albany native who attended both Albany Academy and NYU with Hart and, since moving out to LA, he’s had a successful career as a cinematographer shooting commercials and short films. Off to the Races would be his first time shooting a feature-length film.
With Hart having a background in acting and writing, she leaned on Hass to bring her vision to life and their long time relationship helped facilitate the collaboration.
“I don’t have all of the technical vocabulary for knowing how a gimbal or dolly functions for each shot, but I am a film nerd and have a good understanding about the visual language of film,” Hart explained. “When I met with [Hass], I brought him like six different references from things like Meet Me in St. Louis and Gone With the Wind and also more modern stuff like Succession, and then he had about 30 more that we could talk about and go through.
“It was then I knew I had the right cinematographer,” Hart continued. “It was Alex’s patience and his understanding of my vision that really helped bring this thing to life.”
The script features a lot of crazy and hilarious family dinners a la Wedding Crashers, so Hart needed to cast the right actor to play her father. Scott Cohen was the man for the job, but Hart wasn’t sure if they’d actually be able to get him.
Cohen has had a long and successful acting career dating back to 1990 with his debut role in Jacob’s Ladder. Most importantly, for Hart anyways, he had a 13 episode run on Gilmore Girls as Max Medina; Gilmore Girls and the work of Amy Sherman-Palladino are core texts for Hart.
“It’s such a goofy role and I wasn’t sure if it was something he’d be into, but I felt like it’d be stupid to not at least reach out,” Hart explained. “So I sent him the script with a letter that said, ‘Your voice is in my head from childhood and I watched your Gilmore Girls episodes on loop every night of my life since I was 11 years old and it would be absolutely surreal if you were in my movie.’”
Cohen said he was interested and joined the cast. With that, Hart and her team were off to the races (see what I did there?).
Behind the scenes photos by Matt Adams and Alex Crawford
With a small-budget independent film like Off to the Races, shooting schedules are tight and everyone has to wear multiple hats. For Hart, she was both directing and acting, which was a challenging balancing act for someone taking on their first feature film.
“In those big group scenes, the camera wasn’t on me, but I’d want to act with my actor,” Hart said. “So I would have the portable monitor underneath the table while I’m saying my lines, all while thinking in my head, ‘Oh, this is really good.’”
When Hart was in front of the camera and unable to see herself on the monitor, she would rely on Hass and her producers to step in and call out if anything was off with her performance.
“Someone said to me that it felt like a really egoless set,” Hart recalled. “I definitely have an ego in my normal day-to-day life, but for this, I had to compartmentalize any feeling of ego or vanity because I couldn’t see myself performing. I had to put a lot of faith in my crew and my other actors to call me out if something wasn’t working.”
While it was a stressful work environment with everyone pulling double and triple duties to get this film done, the cast and crew became a family while working together. They even started to affectionately call Saratoga, “Serotonin Springs.”
“They really fell in love with each other and the town. It got to a point where I was like, ‘You guys better come to set sober,’” Hart said. “Saratoga is like adult Disneyland and they were out partying with each other every night, but it worked because that sort of hedonism is what inspired the film.”
Behind the scenes photos by Matt Adams and Alex Crawford
With production wrapped, Hart is currently in the Netherlands editing the film. While the goal is to premiere the film on the festival circuit and eventually get distribution, for now, the focus is just making the best film possible.
Producer Ambros said: “We want to have our own internal deadlines but not be chasing any particular film festival because that should just happen organically. The goal is just to make sure that Miranda’s vision is put to screen in the best way.”
“For me, this is a female-led project that isn’t about women’s pain and suffering,” Hart said of that vision. “It’s about women being goofy and horny. Sexuality doesn’t have to be scary for women in movies. It should be fun. No shame to all the beautiful stories that are darker, or more complex, but I really wanted to bring unabashed, female joy to the screen.”
To follow along with Off to the Races’ journey, you can follow Assembly Line Entertainment on Instagram (@assemblylineent) and Miranda Rae Hart on Instagram (@miranduhhartheartsyou). You can also find Off to the Races on both iMDB and Letterboxd to engage with the film’s release.