ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This is a different sort of tone than we’ve seen you in before.
When the project first came to you, why did you want to do it?
But also, I’d never done anything kind of dramatic before.
Bleecker Street
It’s really funny, but there’s a lot of, like, nutrients in there.
I like the carbs.
I like the diarrhea, poop jokes… which I feel are carbs.
There were some vegetables, it was the bone-brothy script.
What appealed to you about your character, Anna?
She’s very ordinary.
But it was really nice to see like a story about someone who isn’t necessarily extraordinary per se.
A lot of the auditions and stuff I was getting were like, ‘She’s a sassy mom!
She lets her gay son’s freak flag fly!
And she’s also the town slut!
And she also has a secret: she’s killed her alien husband!’
I was getting a lot of crazy s—.
So it was like, wow, this character has so much heart.
And she is very smart and very funny.
She’s not too many shades away from the humor that Nikole is equipped with.
Tell me more about working with Nikole!
Um, we fought a lot.
We physically fought on set every day.
And then everyone was filming it, people were waiting outside the trailer.
It was like a dream.
She really did like a lot of work to make me and Ed feel confident.
She just made it so breezy.
It’s like when you give a sick cat a pill with cheese.
She’s really good at, you know, putting that pill in the cheese, baby!
Truly, I have boundaries.
I am someone who has a very, very, strong, amazing, powerful boundaries.
I’m the boundary queen.
And I think Nikole is one of my best friends in the world and I would also marry her.
And I would also become such a big fan of her that I might kill her.
It’s kind of [an] I-love-her-so-much-no-one-else-can-have-her sort of thing?
It’s kind of that.
It’s such a delicate relationship your characters have, how did you develop that dynamic?
I mean, he is such a big figure in my brain.
He’s just been in, as a comedian, so many formative things that I’ve seen.
He’s like an idolized figure.
That is a movie.
What did you find most challenging about doing something more dramatic like this?
And I make a lot of jokes.
You’re getting bludgeoned with them right now and I’m so sorry.
I had absolutely nothing close to that experience.
But there were some tough scenes where Anna’s really upset and she’s crying.
So I was really pushing through the scenes.
And then it’s like, you have to do multiple takes and you have to do multiple angles.
And oh my gosh, thank baby Jesus for that tear stick, baby!
Because, you know, in Hollywood, none of us…
I don’t have tear ducts anymore.
Because I can’t cry, because I don’t have tear ducts.'
I don’t know.
Meh, just print it.
Just print it and see what happens.
How are you feeling about the film premiering at (virtual) Sundance?
I mean, I think in an ideal world we wouldn’t be in lockdown.
I know that’s very controversial for me to say, politically: I don’t like lockdown.
But I think it’s just an exciting forum.
So it feels really special.
It’s always been like, a weird little dream.
But this is kind of amazing and magical and it still feels really, really dreamy.
What do you hope Sundance audiences take from the film?
It definitely re-jogged how I viewed friendships and family units andfamily, as a word.
I think it reorganizes, or at least opens the possibility of reorganizing, a lot of those ideas.
It is an attack.
Heterosexuality is an attack on our freedom.
I’m going to quote that.
Which… we’ll get there.
Together Togetherpremieres Sunday, Jan. 31, as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
