Inside the movie that will take 20 years to film
Merrily We Roll Along started filming last year — and, as star Beanie Feldstein explains, should be done by around 2040
AS BEANIE FELDSTEIN, star of forthcoming musical Merrily We Roll Along, puts it, “It is a real lesson in delayed gratification!” She’s not kidding: the word “forthcoming” is doing a lot of work there. The Broadway musical, written by the late Stephen Sondheim, tracks the lives of three friends, beginning in 1976, and working backwards through their lives to 1957. On stage, this meant a lot of make-up for the actors. On screen, director Richard Linklater (who previously spent 12 years making
Boyhood) is doing it for real, filming in chunks every couple of years for the next two decades.
Feldstein, a self-professed theatre kid, is effusive about the project. “My soul and my blood are made of Sondheim,” she says. “I am a walking fanatic. And then Rich’s movies — if you love movies, you can’t not love his movies.” If you’re going to do a job for most of your life, might as well make it a good one, then? “To return to it throughout the next two decades of my whole life — which is insane because I’ve only lived about two-and-a-half, three — feels surreal.”
More meaningful still is the fact this is a film about friendship and Feldstein will star alongside Ben Platt, her real-life bestie since she was 14. “I think the thing I’m most proud of in the beginning of my working life was that most of my projects revolved around friendships,” she says — from the teenage kinship of Lady Bird to the heartbreak of her recent role in Impeachment: American Crime Story. “Merrily... is the story of three friends from the end to the beginning,” she says, “and so I’m proud to continue that exploration [of friendship] in my work.”
It’s an exploration that will require patience, though. With the first portion already filmed, the cast and crew will reunite every year or two until the actors are in their late forties. “It does make people become existential,” says Feldstein, with a laugh. “They’re like: ‘Wait, how old will I be?’ Don’t think about it!”