Five years after bringing J.D. Vance<\/a>\u2018s memoir to Netflix<\/a>, Ron Howard<\/a> doesn\u2019t appear to waste much time thinking about the Trump VP.<\/p>\n The 2x Oscar-winning director behind 2020\u2019s Hillbilly Elegy<\/a> explained that the author and former Ohio senator\u2019s political pivot \u201cremains a bit of a surprise to me\u201d after they spent time together promoting the movie when it was released.<\/p>\n More from Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think about it,\u201d Howard told Vulture<\/a> of the film\u2019s complicated legacy. \u201cI know it\u2019s a mixed bag and probably quite culturally divided. I also know that reviews were bad and the audience-reaction rating was pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if he\u2019s able to reconcile the Vance he knew with the one he sees serving under President Donald Trump<\/a>, Howard said, \u201cWell, it\u2019s happened, so I know what I\u2019ve observed. It remains a bit of a surprise to me. I would not have seen it coming, and I wouldn\u2019t have expected his rhetoric to be as divisive as it sometimes is. By the way, I\u2019m not following him or listening to every word.\u201d<\/p>\n In Hillbilly Elegy, a Yale Law student (Gabriel Basso) returns to his Appalachian hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history. The film also stars Amy Adams and Glenn Close, earning the latter Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress.<\/p>\n After Trump named Vance as his VP pick<\/a>, Hillbilly Elegy viewership grew 1,180%<\/a> from 1.5M to 19.2M minutes watched in 24 hours.<\/p>\n When it was published in 2016, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was held up by conservatives and liberals as shedding light on why such a large segment of the population felt alienated from society as Vance\u2019s family history was one of struggle in a legacy of abuse, alcoholism and poverty, depicted the decline of the white working class.<\/p>\n Best of Deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source uk.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Five years after bringing J.D. Vance\u2018s memoir to Netflix, Ron Howard doesn\u2019t appear to waste much time thinking about the Trump VP. The 2x Oscar-winning director behind 2020\u2019s Hillbilly Elegy explained that the author and former Ohio senator\u2019s political pivot \u201cremains a bit of a surprise to me\u201d after they spent time together promoting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1959658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[22389,344429,23191,313591,344658],"class_list":["post-1959657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-donald-trump","tag-hillbilly-elegy","tag-netflix","tag-ron-howard","tag-vance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ron-Howard-Calls-\u2018Hillbilly-Elegys-Legacy-A-Mixed-Bag-After.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1959657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1959657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1959658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1959657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1959657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1959657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n