‘Hillbilly Elegy’ director Ron Howard says he’s ‘surprised’ by JD Vance’s positions

Ron Howard, who directed the film adaptation of J.D. Vance’s best-selling 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” says he’s “surprised” by some of the political positions the author-turned-Senate hopeful has taken.

“I always knew he was conservative, but [he] struck me as a very center-right, a kind of a moderate thinker,” Howard told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published Thursday.

Vance won Ohio’s closely watched GOP Senate primary last week. Despite being a past critic of Donald Trump, Vance secured the ex-president’s endorsement in the crowded Republican race. The 37-year-old best-selling scribe will face Rep. Tim Ryan (D) in the November general election.

Howard, 68, said since working on the film — which detailed Vance’s impoverished Rust Belt childhood before making his way to Yale Law School — he was “surprised by some of the positions [Vance has] taken and statements he’s made.”

“It was a family drama based on real events,” the Academy Award winner said of the 2020 film.

“There was a lot that I personally related to about the family dynamics, but also the region, the sensibility that I had long been looking for a way to express through a story,” he said.

“It ended with him at Yale and wasn’t ever meant to suggest that he was headed in the direction of politics,” Howard said.