‘I don’t know this guy - and we’re meant to be best friends’
Keeley Ryan is chatting to Hollywood A-listers Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher about their new romcom…
Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher have opened up about how they bonded over phone videos — ahead of playing lifelong pals in the new Netflix movie,your Place Or Mine. The romantic comedy landed on the streaming service yesterday (February 10). Your Place Or Mine follows best pals Debbie and Peter, who have been friends for 20 years — even though they are complete and total opposites.
Los Angeles-based Debbie is a practical, risk-averse accountant who is after routine and stability for herself and her son, Jack. Peter is a stylish brand consultant living in Newyork, and he thrives on change.
But when the pair end up swapping houses — and lives — for a week, they learn that they may not have told each other everything after all. And as it turns out, what they think they want might not be what they really need.
The romantic comedy is directed, written and produced by Aline Brosh Mckenna, who also wrote 27 Dresses and the screenplay for The Devil Wears Prada.
And Reese and Ashton opened up about what it was like building the chemistry between the characters, given that Debbie and Peter aren’t often in the same room.
The Legally Blonde actress said,“i had a sort of little mini panic attack — we didn’t really know each other. We had met one time at a party.
“And then a month before we started shooting, I was just like, ‘I don’t know this guy — and we’re meant to be best friends for 20 years’. So we started sending each other videos every day.”
Ashton added,“every day, we would send videos back-and-forth going like,‘how’s your day going?’,‘what’s going on?’,‘what’s happening with you?’,‘what are you afraid of?’,‘what kind of pancakes would you have? Would you have syrup?’, ‘Who’s your best friend — and why are they your best friend?’”
Reese told how sending the videos was a“good”experience — and how those around them began to get involved with the day-to-day clips.
She said,“it was actually kind of fun — and then our kids started getting in on the videos, and our dogs, and — I think that Ashton met my dad on one of my videos.”
The That ‘70s Show star added,“i did,
I met your dad (through a video). And we hung out on your porch, too. And then by the time we started shooting it, we were sort of used to communicating this way.”ashton
“i fell in love with reading fiction again.”
also noted that there was one particularly “tricky part”about working on the project.
He said,“when we’re both in a scene together, we’re both very improv-y with one another. But given the way that (this movie) was done, one side of the coverage was done before the other person even began to shoot their side of the coverage.
“We were acting against a video of the other person and the choices that were already made.
“And you couldn’t make a choice that would dictate the choice that they had already made — there was no affecting the way the other person reacts to the thing that you said.”
Ashton added that the character of Peter was especially fun to play — and told how the role led him to rediscover his love of reading fiction.
He recalled,“aline had a very particular hairstyle that this character had to have and she used the word grown-up a lot.
“She was like,‘i want you to have grownup hair; grown-up hair’. And I was just like, ‘this is my hair — it is old, it’s 45 years old, it’s the same age as me’.
“But the style and put-together essence of the character, I think, was a juxtaposition to the all-over-the-place world of Debbie — and that was fun to play, th is person who was so meticulous and like, everything needed to be put in its place.
“And then the other great thing is — I’m not a very big fiction reader. I don’t read a lot of fiction.
“But then Aline was like, ‘yeah, but this character is a novelist and so he’s going to be very well-read in fiction’. I ended up diving in — Aline sent me, I think, 10 books prior to the film. And she said, ‘you need to read every one of these’.
“Every single one of the books had note cards in them about what Peter would have gotten from this book — specifically, like, what he as a writer would have gotten from this book.
“I read every single one of them. I actually fell in love with reading fiction again from this experience, which was kind of fun and refreshing.”
Jesse Williams plays Theo, the literary editor whom Debbie meets — and sparks a relationship with — while she’s in Newyork City.
And the ex-grey’s Anatomy actor shared the impact that books have had on his own life — as well as the“absolute treasure”of a gift he received from Aline.
He said,“i am an avid reader. I was definitely an avid of reader of fiction — but I kind of stopped reading fiction and became obsessed with non-fiction for the last, maybe, 10-15 years. I’ve been kind of returning to that recently.
“I did teach — and I love books. Books changed my life, particularly in high school. Actually, during this process, Aline was awesome enough to get me a vintage signed copy of one of my favourite books ever,
Toni Morrison’s Song Of Solomon. It’s an absolute treasure.
“Books are absolutely a transformative mark in my life — a fork in the road where things could have gone very differently.”
And Jesse opened up about playing another of Debbie’s romantic interests.
He said,“i think early on, I realised that it’s not really about Theo.
“It’s about what’s true for Debbie, which is kind of one of the lessons in this.
“She surrounds herself with people — intentionally or not — who want what’s best for her and who want to pull her forward.
“We say that adage, the people around you are a reflection of you — choose your friend wisely.
“And if you notice, the characters around her always have her best intentions in mind.
“Even Theo — even though it’s a sort of random meeting, he still sees something in her and puts energy towards her realising her greater self.
“Like they say, sometimes people are in your life for a season.”
And Zoë Chao plays Minka, Peter’s exgirlfriend whom Debbie meets soon after arriving in NYC — and the two of them become fast pals.
The actress told how she fell in love with the character pretty quickly after she first read the script, noting that
Aline had created“such a surprising, lovable weirdo on the page”
— and once wardrobe was done,“boom, the character was there”.
She said,“i love Minka because even though you don’t know what she does — there’s a very calculated mystique about her — she’s not a sinister person.
“She’s actually a very positive person. And I think she’s the ultimate hype sister and wing woman that you need in this life. And I like that she’s full of contradictions, too.”
Wesley Kimmel, who plays Debbie’s son Jack, was another one of the stars who was drawn to their role from the get-go.
He said,“that first audition that I had, we were reading the sides over again to get the gist of what was going on.
“And I looked up to my mom and I was just like,‘this is literally me’.we had the exact same qualities, the exact same issues, the exact same allergies. It was easy. It was easy to be natural in that audition, which is just crazy.”
Aline opened up about what it was that inspired her to take the leap into directing — and howyour Place Or Mine felt“very personal”.
She explained,“i was very taken with the story. It was based off personal experience — and I wanted to do a romantic comedy for people who have been through something in their lives, who have accumulated some life experience.
“And so I was working on that and it just felt very personal to me through the whole process. It was an idea that I’d had for a long time and when it finally came to fruition, it felt very personal.”
Music also plays a massive role in the feelgood film, with Peter’s favourite band The Cars getting several mentions — and their music being played throughout the movie, too.
But Aline explained that they had wanted a song that would specifically represent
Debbie’s character — and so they decided to create one.
She said,“we use The Cars as Peter’s music — I’d grown up on the band, but I also noticed that men tend to pick a band or artist that they really love and then they really stick to that. But for her, we had a bunch of female songwriter-type artists for her — but we wanted a song that was hers.
“I was lucky enough that Sid, who did the composing, and Alan, who works with him, invited me in to write a song with them. It was really fun.
“We spent hours together on the phone and I told them stories about why I’d written the movie and some of the experiences that had led me to write it.
“We talked a lot and we came up with this idea of embers, and this relationship that is not in flames at the moment — but it’s still there, and it just needs to be stoked.
“And then I was on Tiktok and I found this young group of artists from the Berklee School of Music and they sing a capella a lot. We did the arrangement with them and I think it came out to be a really cool song that sort of represents Debbie’s hope for reigniting.”
Reese and Aline serve as producers on the film alongside Lauren Neustadter, Jason Bateman and Michael Costigan.
The film also stars Griffin Matthews, Rachel Bloom, Shiri Appleby,vella Lovell, with Tig Notaro and Steve Zahn. ■
Your Place Or Mine is available to stream on Netflix now.