The duo discuss the ensemble comedy that took Sundance by storm.
“Shooting at night in Los Angeles, the city would be asleep and we’d be doing this little secret thing up on a hill looking out over the city. It was kind of fun,” says actor Adam Scott, who is describing the clandestine nature of his latest film, The Overnight (2015), a comedy with a rather surprising edge.
Playing to his strengths as the all-American everyman, the likes of which he’s brought to a range of titles, from A.C.O.D. (2013) to the dearly departed TV sitcom Parks and Recreations, Scott plays Alex alongside Taylor Schilling’s Emily, a married couple who have just moved to Los Angeles with their young son RJ. Setting out to make new friends and ease their transition to the east coast, the family meet and are immediately invited to dinner at the bounteous home of Kurt (Listen Up Philip star Jason Schwartzman), Charlotte (Judith Godrèche) and their son Max.
As the family “playdate” slowly turns into a dinner party, and pizza is swapped for wine once the children are put to bed, Alex and Emily soon realise that they are in for a night that neither will forget. Little do they know, however, that this chance encounter and wild night may just be the remedy for their marriage and flailing sex life.
Premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to a raucous reaction (“We had this lovely problem of wanting people to stop laughing,” says Scott), The Overnight is something of a passion project for the actor, who – along with his producer wife Emily Sablan – got the ball rolling after receiving director Patrick Brice’s script from Mark Duplass, who serves as executive producer. “We got together with [Patrick] Brice and just thought he was super-smart, funny and talented. About a year later, we were shooting the movie and were lucky enough to cajole Taylor, Jason and Judith to be in it,” says Scott. “I just loved it because I thought it was really funny, insightful and bizarre.”
Having found fame with the critically lauded Netflix original series Orange is the New Black (2013), whose third season just bowed on the online streaming service, Taylor Schilling treads similar ground to her portrayal of the show’s ostensibly straight-laced and recently incarcerated protagonist Piper Chapman, although Emily is unknowingly suffering through something a little more closer to home.
“She is a young mum and in a relationship that she cares a lot about. There are parts of her life that are working really well, and there are some things that are a little ‘stuck’,” says Schilling, whose relationship with Alex she finds has hit something of a rut in contrast to Kurt and Charlotte’s overtly passionate one. Scott agrees:
“[Alex and Emily] have sort of come to an agreement about who they are and how they fit into the world. They’ve found a way to function together, dysfunction and all,” he says. That uneasy equilibrium gets turned upside down, however, over the span of this one night, which tests the relationships between the two couples in surprising ways. “There’s sort of a power shift in the relationship and everything they thought was nailed down becomes unhinged,” he teases.
For Schilling, who is now familiar with working with a large ensemble, the film offered her the opportunity of working in a more tightly knit group of actors, which was a change of pace that quickly paid off. “Working well with someone is a very nebulous thing. It kind of happens or it doesn’t, and there can be all sorts of iterations of what works and what doesn’t,” she says. “Thankfully, Adam, Jason and Judith are generous and incredibly talented performers and partners, so it all felt very safe and very kind. It was a very kind environment.”
With a résumé that boasts work with a wealth of contemporary film and TV’s finest comedy performers, Scott was perhaps more attuned to the nature of the film’s tight 12-day shoot, though how did he find working without prior rehearsal? “We all just started shooting this thing not knowing exactly what it was going to look like, but we all just sort of clicked in immediately,” he says. “As far as the tone of it and the way the scenes took their shape, it was kind of effortless. It just all kind of felt right, right away.”
A funny and risqué take on thirty-something sexual frustration and parenthood, The Overnight is a throwback to the kind of American sex comedy’s made popular in the eighties with the likes of Porky’s (1981), though Brice goes for something more than just easy laughs, as Schilling reiterates:
“I hope that people are going to be like, “I just laughed and had a good time watching that movie”. But I also think there’s something really sweet and lovely about it, this thread of sweetness,” she says. “There’s this kind of core idea in the movie [about] doing something that scares you. Acceptance on a new level, in yourself or in a relationship, that has payoffs. There’s something very genuine in that that I really appreciated.”
The Overnight is released in UK cinemas 26 June 2015
