A simple FavoUr
Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick square up for Paul Feig’s twisty comedy thriller, A SIMPLE FAVOUR, about two friends locked in a deadly game of one-upmanship. Total Film steps in to the ring to meet Feig and his two tussling heavyweights.
Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Paul Feig defy expectations in a Hitchcockian thriller. We meet the trio in Vegas…
April, 2018. In Caesars Palace, the iconic Las Vegas hotel and setting for some classic boxing matches in its time, two of Hollywood’s finest are holding court. In the red corner, the petite Oscar-nominated star of Up In The Air, Anna Kendrick. In the blue, Blake Lively, the former Gossip Girl and better half to Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds.
Stationed in separate rooms in the Augustus Tower, Kendrick is dressed in a white bathrobe (the air conditioning is cold, she reasons), looking like she’s about to step into the ring. Lively, meanwhile, is nursing a hand injury. “You should see the other guy!” she quips (she actually got hurt on the set of upcoming spy thriller,
The Rhythm Section).
Were it not for the fact that the barefoot Lively has her pink heels on the table and Kendrick invites Total Film to “get snugly” on the sofa, you could practically hear the Rocky fanfare playing. These two titans are in town for Paul Feig’s A Simple Favour, a comic murdermystery tale that packs more punch than most of the boxers who have ever graced this hallowed venue.
Based on the novel by Darcey Bell, it follows two unlikely female friends, both mothers, with more skeletons in their closets than a haunted house. When the film opens, Kendrick’s “mommy vlogger” Stephanie announces on her latest post that the glamorous Emily (Lively), a fashion PR who works for flamboyant designer Dennis Nylon, has disappeared.
Where is she? Who exactly is Emily? And what exactly is A Simple Favour? The presence of Ghostbusters director Feig might suggest broad laughs. “The closest thing that I’ve been able to compare it to is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” says Kendrick, referring to Shane Black’s 2005 action-comedy. “It’s not exactly a comedy, but it definitely makes you laugh. But it’s also very much a serious thriller. The stakes in the actual mystery are very real.”
With a plot featuring death, family trauma and insurance scams, it sure confused the hell out of the actors. “I remember reading the script and thinking, ‘Are you making a comedy or doing something entirely different?’” says Lively. “There are some moments
where the words we were saying and the environment we were in… we thought, ‘Are we doing really bad over-the-top comedy acting, in a very earnest thriller?’”
It’s easy to see why. Characters are wild, hilarious and heightened. But then, as Lively notes, there are emotional scenes thrown into the mix. “Paul said, ‘That’s what real life is. There are moments where you’re over-the-top and silly and there are moments where you’re really genuine and there are moments when you’re afraid and there are moments you are intimidating.’” As soon as he was sent the script by Nerve screenwriter Jessica Sharzer, Feig knew this was exactly what he’d been looking for. He and his DoP, John Schwartzman, would frequently circle back to the same discussion. “We would always say, ‘We want to make suburban noir.’ I like the idea of dark stuff happening in brightly lit homes. It was really fun… how do we create danger in everyday situations?”
Feig’s watchword for the film was “delicious”. “I drove people crazy [with this] all through pre-production,” he says. “Everything about this needs to be… it needs to be a feast for the eyes.” From the production design by Jefferson Sage, particularly Emily’s slick designer home she shares with husband Sean, to the fabulous costumes by Renee Ehrlich Kalfus, “delicious” is exactly what’s served up.
If there’s another shadow cast over A Simple Favour, it’s Alfred Hitchcock. “What I see as Hitchcockian about this is that there’s darkness, drama and tension in an unpredictable story, but there’s funny characters in it,” says Feig. “[In Hitchcock films,] big personalities come in and out. That’s what I think gets lost in the genre. Everybody treats [it] so seriously, but let’s have fun with the quirkiness of the people in this.”
A case in point is Dennis Nylon, the outrageous fashion guru played by British star Rupert Friend (Homeland). “I thought Dennis Nylon’s hero should definitely be Tom Ford,” says Feig, looking sartorially elegant himself in an Anderson & Sheppard three-piece suit. With Friend letting rip in a way you have never seen before, he’d be a prime candidate for a spin-off. “Dennis Nylon and Jason Statham need to team up,” Feig jokes. “That’s the hybrid I want.”
Feig immediately began to play up other Hitchcockian elements of the script, with Kendrick and Lively unquestionably spins on the archetypal Hitchcock brunette and blonde. Then there’s the poster, with its Saul Bass-style design, featuring a giant question mark – a punctuation sign that hangs over this whole film. Feig even made his own Master of Suspense-like cameo, albeit partly the result of a production blooper. “There’s a shot of a bus going by and my reflection is in the bus!”
Yet it’s the central pair that really ties A Simple Favour together. Nobody is quite who they seem. Take Stephanie. “She’s got a lot of issues… guilt about stuff she has done in her youth,” Kendrick volunteers. “She is trying so hard to plaster on a smile and a can-do attitude that says, ‘I’ve never done anything wrong in my life!’ The cracks start to show as the movie goes on. I wanted it to come from a place of trying to cover up guilt as opposed to
‘It’s cat and mouse between two equals. It’s not woman against woman, it’s a chess game they’re playing with each other’ PAUL FEIG
an obnoxious woman who think she’s perfect and better than other mums.”
For Kendrick, it was the ideal chance to subvert the perky image she’s peddled in films such as Pitch Perfect and find something closer to home. “All my friends know me… I can’t get through a serious conversation without making an inappropriate joke. I drink all the time. I curse all the time. I have no interest in children. So when people are like, ‘You’re perfect to play this upbeat, doesn’t curse, doesn’t drink mommy blogger who is obsessed with her kids,’ I’m like, ‘What? What the fuck are you talking about?’”
Then there’s Lively’s Emily, the foul-mouthed publicist who, as flashbacks swiftly reveal, is a master schemer. “Some of the things that
I was saying as this character, I was so liberated… I would never speak that way in real life!” says the actress, blushing a shade to almost match those pink shoes. “But when I was this character, I was able to say the most off-the-wall, terrible, crass things! It’s clearly somewhere in me.”
Given that her own Hollywood life brings her in touch with fashion and PRs, did she take any inspiration? Not exactly, she replies, but her own rep left a huge mark. “My publicist Leslie Sloane is a bull!” she giggles. “And I just remember when I first met her. I was very conservative and probably a little uptight. Leslie… she says exactly what she thinks. She’s not kissing your butt to your face, then stabbing you in the back when you walk away.”
Kendrick had encountered Lively before, having worked with hubby Ryan Reynolds on 2014’s The Voices. “I’d met her a couple of times on that set and had a handful of conversations with her,” she says. “I just thought she was so, so sweet. And it was actually really fun to get to know her a little better, and see the kind of funny dark side of her. I was a little worried about her being such a sweetheart that I would be offending her left and right.”
Bringing them together proves a delicious – there’s that word again – combination for a twisty narrative that frequently pulls the proverbial rug from underneath the audience’s boots. While Emily initially appears to be the domineering one – always chiding her new-found friend for saying “sorry” – Stephanie gradually grows some fangs, and is not afraid to use them.
“I like how they feed off each other,” says Feig. “She’s influenced by Emily. Without Emily, I don’t think she could become the person she is. But she gets the lessons, takes them and runs with them. I like the fact it’s such a cat and mouse [story], but between two equals. I don’t feel it’s woman against woman. It’s really this chess game they’re playing with each other.”
A portrait of two women who both know their own minds, it feels like the perfect film in the post-#MeToo world. Kendrick admits she can feel a sea-change in the type of scripts now being produced in Hollywood. “There’s definitely something happening, and it’s happening really quickly because it’s overdue. That’s for women and people of colour and all kinds of stories that weren’t getting told are getting told now. It’s going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out.” Direct action
For Feig, it’s another chance to create a female-driven story after Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters and Melissa McCarthy comedies The Heat and Spy. “My greatest joy is to work with talented women,” he says, though he’s found equality in A Simple Favour, casting Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) as Emily’s husband Sean, and Andrew Rannells (Girls), as a fellow parent.
Like her co-star, Lively was bowled over by her director. “I would work with Paul Feig on every movie I do for the rest of my life,” she says, possibly only exaggerating a little. “When you get in the ring and they call ‘action’, he reminds you, ‘Let’s go play!’ That freedom is so great.” With that, she picks up her shoes and heads for the door. Seconds out… round two.
A SIMPLE FAVOUR opens on 21 September.