Family, am I right? The new dramedy Adult Beginners premiered at SXSW, and stars Nick Kroll, Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale were in attendance at Austin. Kroll plays Jake, a failed tech innovator who moves in with his sister Justine (Byrne) and her husband (Cannavale). He helps out with their son, and while crazy hijinks ensue, Jake and Justine also share some family bonds, as does hubby Danny. Kroll and Cannavale improv’ed a little, but just like the tone of Adult Beginners, they took questions about the film seriously, while having a little fun.
CraveOnline: Nick, I feel like whenever any comedic actor does something even slightly more dramatic, people are surprised. I always wonder how many Robin Williamses or Jim Carreys does it take for people to get that actors can do both. Did you ever face any resistance to doing anything that wasn’t completely comedy?
Nick Kroll: Not really because it’s not like people were offering me tons of dramatic films and then someone was like, “No, no, no, he does comedy only. I think it’s a challenge just like I think it’s probably a challenge for dramatic actors who want to go do comedy. People have an idea of what you do. The beauty in this particular case was making a movie basically building it from the ground up. It allowed me to stretch it out, but I would say that even when I’m doing very broad comedy, I’m still trying to do it from an emotionally honest place. So there are times where it’s a crazy ridiculous scene but I’m playing the character as truthfully and dramatically as I would in a drama.
Were you ever personally looking for something more dramatic?
Nick Kroll: Yeah. I’m not going to speak for Bobby but I think the goal is to always stretch your legs and try to find interesting material to do. For me, the experience of being able to do a movie like this with Rose and Bobby who are both actors I admire, being able to work on something and not push a joke, really be as truthful to a scene as possible was exciting for me.
Was the tone of Adult Beginners easy to get?
Bobby Cannavale: I read the script and I just laughed out loud so many times. Having said that, it didn’t feel like I was reading a comedy so much as just real life situations that are funny. It is funny having a child and not really being great at it, let’s say, and learning as you go. There were just funny circumstances that the characters found themselves in that I found to be very familiar to me. I thought Liz [Flahive] and Nick and Jeff [Cox] found those moments that we find ourselves in sometimes where we go, “You wouldn’t believe this if you saw it in a movie.” There they were in the film.
As Nick said, I do think that the circumstances do come out of an emotionally honest place. What’s funny to me is to see somebody be really desperate, desperately trying to get out of those circumstances or fix the circumstances that they’re in. I think the film is filled with that. Nick’s character is at a real juncture in his life in which he has to make a decision on what to do with his life. I think that those are desperate times and they can result in funny moments. I saw that in the script when I read it. Then of course playing that, you have to play it honestly and hopefully it’ll translate and come out funny.
Nick Kroll: Liz Flahive and Jeff Cox wrote the script and they are a real husband and wife. They wrote the script. They had a three-year-old and were pregnant with their second kid. So they really understood what it’s like to be a young, desperate parent, sleepless. One of the first things that I remember really laughing at and loving when I started reading their pages was the first meal when Jake sit down with Justine and Danny. Justine and Danny are shoveling food into their mouths so fast. It’s like oh right, because parents have no time to eat. They peppered the script with all those kinds of specifics that only young parents can really identify with.
Was one of the things you could relate to being stuck with a brother-in-law for three months?
Bobby Canavale: [Laughs] No, although I will say my sister and my brother-in-law have been married now for 25 years. She’s younger than me. They’ve been together since they were 15 and there was a moment right after they got married. They got married when they were 18. There was a moment right after they got married where my sister had a moment of doubt and disappeared for a second. I had my brother-in-law with me for a couple of weeks and that was intense. I mean, they’re the most incredible couple in the world. They have three beautiful kids and they’re massively in love but there was a moment there where my brother-in-law was with me all the time for a couple of weeks. It’s a funny thing.
I’ve got to say, it did remind me when we were shooting this, I did think about that for a moment because here you are with the person, I guess I would be the brother-in-law. You love this person but you’re kind of forced to love them, right? You don’t really have a choice so you have to negotiate that. Then they’re living in your house. I think Danny is looking for a little bit of excitement in his life and so Jake represents that for him, a chance for him to forget that he’s this idea of a parent, that he has to be responsible. It sort of allows him to extend the arrested development of his maturity in a way.
Nick Kroll: Adding to that, with brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, you don’t choose your sibling’s spouses, but depending on your family, you’re thrust into a time where you spend a lot of time with them. Even within that, alliances change so there are moments where I find myself closer to my brother-in-law at this particular moment than I am to my sister. It’s constantly moving and it’s one of the things I love about the relationship between me, Bobby and Rose’s characters. It’s moments where I’m closer to Rose, moments where I’m closer to Bobby and we’re all kind of shifting around looking for solace or comfort or excitement, or whatever it is at a given moment.
Check Out: Nick Kroll Loves to Make Fun of Canada
Nick, were you happy The Douche got a final sendoff on “Parks and Recreation?”
Nick Kroll: I was. To be on that show, when I started to get into comedy, doing a show like “Parks and Rec” was one of the goals. To be on it and be able to come back, and then have my little goodbye was really, really cool.
That always made me laugh because that’s what all radio sounds like to me. It’s just so much noise.
Nick Kroll: Yeah. I feel very lucky to be part of that show.
Bobby, since you’re going to be in Ant-Man, it seems like Marvel is trying out some of their more out-there characters. Did you ever read Ant-Man comics?
Bobby Cannavale: No.
Nick Kroll: He was too busy getting laid. [Both Laugh]
Bobby Cannavale: No, I never did. I read a bit of it before we started shooting the movie but it just wasn’t relevant in the sense that the original Ant-Man, the Hank Pym character, all those comic books were about him. In this one it’s a completely new derivative of him.
Nick Kroll: But you grew up with a Paul Rudd poster on your walls.
Bobby Cannavale: I did grow up with a Paul Rudd Clueless poster on my wall, yeah. They made a poster just of that character.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
