Q&A about ‘Downhill’ revamp with star, producer
Yes, of course Julia Louis-Dreyfus has seen “Force Majeure,” and yes, of course she loved it.
“Spectacular,” she called it in a recent interview.
And no, that didn’t give her pause when it came to the American remake, which she produced and starred in.
Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell star in “Downhill,” directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s take on Ruben Östlund’s original film. Louis-Dreyfus and Ferrell play a couple on a skiing trip with their children. Their markedly different reactions to a potential crisis lead to unexpected revelations about the state of their relationship.
Question: So the inevitable question: Why remake “Force Majeure?”
Answer: Searchlight (Pictures, a film studio) brought it to my attention. They had seen it at Cannes and were in conversations with Ruben Östlund, who is the director-writer of the original “Force Majeure,” conversations about making an American adaptation. And he was very keen and eager to do that. So when I heard about that, that this was a possibility, I saw it as a great opportunity to put an American lens on this story, this spectacular story. I thought, just, an opportunity not to be missed.
Q: What’s an American lens?
A: Well, in this case it’s an American family on vacation in Austria. So you have a fish-out-of-water element already. They’re in a foreign place where they perhaps don’t feel as comfortable as they might if they were home. Language is different, customs are different. And also I think we very intentionally kind of opened up the character of the wife, that I played, so that the story wasn’t super black-and-white. It had a little ambiguity. We were spreading the bad behavior around in the film, shall we say.
Q: The scenes when you and Will Ferrell so obviously need to talk about what happened and didn’t were incredibly uncomfortable.
A: Oh good! I’m so happy to hear you say that. … That was very much our intention, to sort of live in discomfort. The movie is very much about that — speaking truth and not speaking truth, and the assignment of shame, and how does one reconcile all of these ideas? I think there’s a lot of suffering in this film that I think is uncomfortable. I’m happy about that.
Q: What’s that like as an actor?
A: Well it’s pretty rigorous (laughs). The dinner party scene (in which, in front of guests, her character finally unloads on Ferrell’s for 10-plus minutes) … although there’s a lot of tension before and after that, in that scene in particular, it was a 12-page scene that we shot over three days, and we just shot it in one take every time, over and over and over again. So it started to feel like theater, in the best sense.
Q: You and Ferrell are known for comedies. Here you do dramatic work.
A: Both Will and I were drawn to this project because it offered us the opportunity to do something that, while there are many comedic elements in this movie, and beats, it offers us the opportunity to tackle dramatic material. And that is what was so appealing to both of us. I like flexing new muscles and finding new muscle groups in your body (laughs). So it was just a great chance.
Q: Do you want to do more?
A: I’d love to do more of it, absolutely.
Q: With your new deal with Apple TV Plus, it seems like you could.
A: Yeah, totally. … I mean, I don’t discount doing more big sort of other kinds of comedy in my life. But I’m very eager to sink my teeth into more dramatic roles. I’m opening myself up to material that is good, be it dramatic or comedic or a smattering of both.