Paul Feig doesn’t make movies with women to be political, they’re just more fun

Paul Feig is a little surprised to be here, too. The director of fan-favorite films like “Bridesmaids,” “Spy” and “The Heat” — as well as, of course, the creator of the beloved TV series “Freaks and Geeks” — had long resisted the Hollywood imperative to franchise every blockbuster, sticking to a “pretty hardcore” policy against sequels. But there was something about the twisty alchemy of his 2018 surprise smash “A Simple Favor” that made him want to come back for more. “I love these characters and I love Blake [Lively] and Anna [Kendrick],” Feig explained during a recent Salon Talks conversation. So he and the team decided to take the women and throw them this time into a “very high stakes, glamorous, high money world” — with an inevitable body count — for a wedding in Capri for “Another Simple Favor.”

Though Feig has of late carved out his turf as a director of thrillers — his next in the genre, “The Housemaid,” comes out this fall — he’s still most associated with his broad slapsticks. “I still consider all my movies to be comedies,” he told me. “Just some are really, really dark comedies.”

What is equally consistent is Feig’s penchant for making movies centered on female characters, a knack that’s afforded him tremendous box office success and also, at times, an unusual amount of pressure and scrutiny. Recalling the controversy over his 2016 reboot of “Ghostbusters” with Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, he said, “Suddenly I’m getting death threats. I’m just trying to make a movie about funny people chasing ghosts.”

And looking back on when it seemed as if the entire question of whether audiences would ever go to a movie about women was riding solely on the box office returns of “Bridesmaids,” Feig said, “It was scary. I resented the fact that Hollywood put all that on us. I resented it for my cast and for all women in the business.” Fortunately, the film was a massive success, helping pave the way for other female-centric projects. “It was really unfair, but thank God we did well,” he said. “We were predicted to do badly right up until the day we came out, so thank goodness it worked.”

During our conversation, Feig also opened up about the enduring legacy of “Freaks and Geeks,” being the sartorial inspiration for Blake Lively’s character in “A Simple Favor” and the secret to making a perfect martini: “Don’t shake it like you’re trying to kill something inside the shaker.”

“Another Simple Favor” is streaming now on Amazon Prime. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

You’ve said that you had a loose no-sequels policy for a long time.

It was a pretty hardcore policy, actually. 

What made you change your mind? 

I love these characters, and I love Blake and Anna. They’re so fun to work with. The movie had hit streaming during the pandemic, and it just went through the roof. It was internationally all over the place, number one, it just made me go, “Well, maybe we break the rule and do it.” My producing partner, Laura Fisher, and I were like, “OK, what would it be?”

I had been for a number of years obsessed with this wedding that I’d seen in Vogue. Giovanna Battaglia, the fashion editor, got married to this really rich guy, and they took over all of Capri. I just was fascinated by these pictures. It was so over the top and opulent. I was like, “I want to do something about that.”

Then, we were trying to figure out what the story would be. “What if there’s a destination wedding if we get Emily out of prison and we don’t know why she’s going there?” Our writer, Jessica Scharzer, took it and just ran with it. These movies are all about taking Anna Kendrick’s character Stephanie and putting her in situations she’s completely unprepared for. In the first movie, she conquered this weird world of Emily in the suburbs. It was like, “Well, we got to take her out of her comfort zone,” and so [we] sent her off to Italy in a very high-stakes, glamorous, high-money world. 

Speaking of the glam, I saw you tell Drew Barrymore that Blake Lively wanted to base her aesthetic on you for the first film. 

The first one was very based on my look. She wanted to do all these power suits, and then she and Renee Kalthus, my amazing costume designer, came up with all this stuff. We got a lot of stuff from the Ralph Lauren archives because we’re friendly with them. For the next one, we know that people love Emily’s suiting, but I also want to take people in a new direction. We decided we’ll start her off in these suits, and then she’s a bride marrying a very rich guy in this very opulent world, so let’s just take the fashion crazy. 

Working with Blake, she’s so smart about that stuff, and she has the most amazing, crazy ideas. Even the first time we see her [character], she’s like, “I should be in like a prison suit.” Then Renee went with her designers and found this beautiful striped suit. Then, Blake added shackled jewelry and handcuffed earrings. There’s a whole wedding sequence where Blake’s like, “I want my wedding dress to be latex.” They put together this amazing, amazing wedding dress with a bloody veil, which again was Blake’s idea. She goes, “We should have blood on the end.” She’s so smart about that stuff. 

There are some new characters this time around. Tell me about some of the new people, because you’ve got an A+ list. 

I’m very lucky. We wrote a role for Allison Janney. I love Janney, and she was in “Spy,” and we’ve become fast friends ever since then. I was just like, “I have to get Janney in this movie,” and so we came up with this character, Aunt Linda, for her. Then it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to do it because of her schedule, working constantly. At one point, it was like, “Well, we can’t get her. We’ll have to get somebody else.” I was like, “Wait, no, come on. We’re showbiz. We’re Hollywood. We can make things work.” We rearranged the entire schedule just to get her there. Thank goodness she’s there. Then Jean Smart, she’s the only original cast member who couldn’t make her schedule work. Elizabeth Perkins is a pal. I worked with her on “Weeds” for years, and then she was in “Ghostbusters,” and we’ve been buddies. 

She came in and took over the role that Jean Smart does [in the original] and just crushes it. She’s so funny. Then we have our Italians, our wonderful Michele Morrone, playing Blake’s fiancé, and then the legend that is Elena Sofia Ricci. We got to have her in the movie as his mom, and then Lorenzo de Moor. It was fun casting all these Italians. I had done a movie called “I Am David,” a very unsuccessful film, by the way, back in 2002. We shot it in Bulgaria, but it was supposed to take place in Italy. I had cast a lot of Italian actors back then and kind of learned how to figure out who could speak the language and who could adapt it and all that. It was just really fun, and then we shot in Italy. 

Now that you’ve broken your no-sequels rule, is this going to be a trilogy? 

It could be. I still want to stick to my no-sequels rule, but now that we’ve done it, there’s no “no threequel” rule in my company. We set it up definitely where it could continue. I just love Blake and Anna, and it’s just so fun to work with them. 

The way that the first movie hit, coming from you, was unexpected. People did not think of you as a guy who was going to make this sexy, funny, but dark movie. What drew you to this?

The first movie, they marketed “from the darker side of Paul Feig,” which made me laugh because all my movies are comedies. It just depends on what the tone is. I like a darker tone. I like heavy stakes in comedy. The problem with a lot of comedy over the years has been, it’s funny, but you’re not leaning forward going, “Are they going to get through this? Are they going to get killed?” I think audiences need that, especially these days. Things that are just fluffy and [that people] can’t invest in and feel danger in, they don’t take it seriously. The best kind of comedy now is when it’s in a very tense situation. Most comedy these days is in horror movies. That’s where the most quality comedy you’ll find because you’re screaming and laughing at the same time. I like that.

When we did the movie, “The Heat,” we had that one sequence where the bad guy stabs Sandra Bullock with a knife in the leg. She and Melissa take it out, and then they realize they have to put it back in so he doesn’t know that they’re untied. The reaction from the audience when Melissa has to put that knife back in her leg is so funny to me because people are screaming and laughing at the same time. I go, “If I can marry those two emotions together, that’s even more fun than just getting a pure laugh.” It’s a fun way to go. 

When you talk about what people are looking for right now, we are not in a “Bridesmaids” moment. You’ve seen those ups and downs and you’ve weathered through them. What do you think it says about this moment? Do you think two years from now we’re going to want a lighter, sweeter vibe? 

People don’t like frivolous these days. I think the stakes have been so high for the last 10 years. Just pick your reasons why that is. People get very distrustful of things that look just silly and manipulative. I found that even on “Bridesmaids,” when we were putting out the trailers, all this feedback would come in over the internet of, “Oh, clearly the funniest jokes are in the trailer and they’re trying to fool us.” It’s like, “Why are you so hostile? We’re just trying to make you laugh,” but I get it. They’ve been burned in the past by things that were just too silly. Comedies, we don’t get awards, but comedy is really hard because we have to make it look really easy.

It’s what my editor from “Bridesmaids,” Bill Kerr, used to call the Angry Villagers syndrome, which is [where] you get an audience and they come into a comedy like, “We’re going to have fun. We’re ready to have fun.” If the first joke is just OK, they’re like, “Oh, OK, well, that was kind of funny, but I thought that’d be funnier.” Then, if the next joke is just OK, or doesn’t get a laugh, they become angry villagers. They’re like, “We paid to be in here. I want to burn the village down because clearly, these filmmakers don’t know what’s funny.” That’s why I have to test my movies like crazy, and we have to shoot all kinds of alternative jokes and lines, because if those don’t work, get them out, put in the big ones. 

I think a lot of comedies were just OK, and people want to invest in this higher-stakes thing. That said, I do think we might be coming back to an age where maybe people are open to that. I saw the trailer for the “Naked Gun” remake, and it looks hilarious. I think that movie’s going to do well just because it’s just crazy silly. Even at that, there’s a lot of violence in there. People need that extra bit of realism, or as we call them in the business, stakes. 

When you talk about “Bridesmaids,” I remember so vividly feeling like all of feminism was riding on this movie. People were writing op-eds that it was our duty as women to make this movie a hit; the stakes were huge. What was it like for you when you realized that this was going to be a kind of movement? 

Well, it was scary. I resented the fact that Hollywood put all that on us. I resented it for my cast and for all women in the business because I’ve always wanted to do I doing female-led stuff. I just liked doing great, three-dimensional stories for women. I had a lot of female writer friends who were inspired by us. They’re out pitching their female-led movies, and they were just hearing across the board, “Well, we have to wait and see how ‘Bridesmaids’ does.” It’s like, that’s so screwed up. You never heard when “The Hangover” was coming out, “We’re going to wait and see how this movie with three guys goes.” It was really unfair, and I really resented it, but thank God we did well. We were predicted to do badly right up until the day we came out, so thank goodness it worked. 

I remember going to a screening and being afraid because there were men in the audience. I thought, “If they don’t laugh, I’m going to lose the right to vote.”

I will say what happened when we did “Ghostbusters” — my “all-female ‘Ghostbusters,'” as they call it — people tried to make that a political thing. People just were like, “I don’t want to want politics in this. I just want to go see a funny movie.” I think it backfired on our movie because people were just like, “I don’t want to get caught up in this.” You keep thinking the business is moving forward, but look at what’s happening right now with the women’s movement. I thought we were moving forward so much, and now things are rolling back. It’s depressing because I’m old enough to remember when in the ’70s the feminist movement felt like, “OK, we’re off and running.” Then it dials back and it’s really screwed up. 

Besides the backlash you’ve faced, you’ve had hugely successful projects, but also disappointments. When you release a movie and then it doesn’t do well, what do you learn from those experiences and those disappointments?

It’s gutting because you work so hard, and when you make a movie, it’s 24 hours a day. It’s all you dream about. It’s all you think about. It sometimes takes a couple of years. The lessons you learn are really, why did this not work? This sounds very broad, but with “Ghostbusters,” it got so caught up in politics, but that wasn’t even something that we brought to it. That was external, other than the fact that I announced, “I’m going to make an all-female ‘Ghostbusters.'” It wasn’t a political thing for me. It was just, I got offered to do “Ghostbusters.” Harold Ramis had just died. I’d been told Bill Murray didn’t want to do it, so I’m like, “Well, how do I do this? Let’s just reboot it and start it again.” 

All my movies are filled with funny women. Let me just cast all the funny women I know. That was it. That was the only politics behind it. Then suddenly, the world blew up. It was 2015, 2016. Things were very tense around then with Trump coming in and all the bro backlash. Gamergate was going on. It was a very hostile environment at that point. It just got caught up in that. Sometimes I go, “Should I have even done that movie?” But no, I’m really proud that I did it. I just think sometimes there are just things you can’t control. 

It’s just supposed to be there to be funny. It’s just there to entertain you. Suddenly, I’m getting death threats. I’m just trying to make a movie about funny people chasing ghosts. Why did this happen? 

When we talk about these projects that you’ve had that didn’t do as well, the classic is “Freaks and Geeks.” This is a show that was canceled, and yet it was this springboard for you, for Judd Apatow, for actors like Seth Rogen, Busy Phillips, Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel and Dave Franco. What was the experience like of getting a show made, having it canceled, but then it becomes a beloved, iconic piece of popular culture?

That’s the salve on it, that it keeps going. Back then, it was awful because that was in the days before they were putting out TV shows on DVD. If you didn’t have a show that went 100 episodes, once it was gone, it was gone. There was nowhere to see it. Some people [were saying], “Oh, I heard that was really good,” but it’s gutting. 

We could tell that it was sliding down. When we came out, we got the most amazing reviews ever, just like, “Oh, we won.” On our opening night, we had these really big ratings, even though we were on Saturday night, which was a bad night for us for that kind of show. Then, even ratings dropped halfway through the pilot because we ended the second act with Eli, the handicapped kid in the school, breaking his arm and screaming in pain on the ground. I think the audience was like, “OK, I can’t deal with this.”

It was really hard for me when it got canceled, yet I saw the writing on the wall. My mother died two days before we got canceled, out of the blue. When that happened, when we got canceled, it was like, “I’m just in tragedy overload. I can’t deal with it.” Then, after that, the aftermath is really sad because when you create something and create these characters and have actors come in and flesh them out so well, you’ve created a family. Then suddenly it’s like, “OK, your family’s gone,” and you can’t keep these stories going and you can’t keep writing for these people, and it’s really sad. 

You’re very good at getting people who seem natural together. The chemistry in “A Simple Favor,” there’s a through line from “Freaks and Geeks” there. Obviously, it’s the casting director’s job, but how are you as a director cultivating that intimacy? 

Something like “Freaks and Geeks” is working very closely with Allison Jones, our casting director, and just throwing the doors open wide. You just have to have everybody come in, see every kid, every actor you can. The mistake a lot of people make is that they cast to the script, meaning, “How do the people say these lines that we’ve written for them?” And, “Oh, they don’t quite look like I imagine the character to look.” I’ve heard so many times, “My God, they were so good, but they’re just not quite right for the role.” I’m like, “Rewrite the role to keep that person.” You want these people who are coming in who are not just good actors but are going to inspire you, and they’re going to have an inner life that will go beyond what you’ve written on the page. That’s how I cast everything.

Now these days, when I’m working with big stars, obviously I’m not auditioning Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick or Sydney Sweeney, whoever I’m working with at the time. You get them going, “I hope this works.” What I found is that at a certain level, actors are just able to have chemistry with each other. Sometimes you go like, “Oh boy, this isn’t quite working.” I found you kind of have an inner instinct on who’s going to mesh, and then you go from there. I’ve had plenty of projects where the first day on the set, I’m like, “Hope this works.” You get right into the first take, and wow, it is magical. It’s a hard-to-define magical thing, but boy, you’re so happy when you find it. 

You mentioned working with Sydney Sweeney. I can’t wait for this next movie to come out. This one is also based on a book?

“A Simple Favor” was a book, but this is the first time I’ve done a book that has been a giant book. It’s called “The Housemaid,” and it’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for a year and a half. It’s a really good book, which is great. Back in thriller territory. It’s really dark, but at the same time, I still consider all my movies to be comedies. Just some are really, really dark comedies. 

Sydney Sweeney is a dream to work with. Amanda Seyfried is a dream to work with. Brandon Sklenar is so wonderful. I am very lucky. I mean, I do a lot of research too before I cast somebody, just to find out their reputation. You have to dig deep because I’ve been told sometimes, “Don’t work with them. They’re terrible.” I’ll call other people just to find out, “Were they terrible in general, or are they terrible because you didn’t work with them well?” I was an actor for 15 years. It’s a very tough job. You’re so exposed, and you’re so dependent on the director. I can make anybody look terrible if I wanted to, by just picking the wrong takes and giving them an over-the-top direction, or giving them bad direction, or shooting them incorrectly. 

The trust has to be so high. You have to go into these projects like, “I’m on your side. What can I do to make you better? How can I create a safe environment for you?” The biggest part of my job is, how do I create a safe environment where you can try anything, you can mess up. They’ll know I’m not going to use it if it doesn’t work, or I’ll use something that they don’t think is good, but if I test it with an audience and people love it, then I’m going to put it in and they’ll see why it’s in there. I like to push them past their comfort level, too. 

I want to ask you one more thing, because you wrote a book about cocktails. Are you wearing a martini glass signet ring? 

It is. Designed myself, exactly. 

In the film, you have Blake Lively making the Vesper Martini exactly the way that you make it. I know, because I’ve watched you do it. What is the secret to a good martini so that I can go home at 10 a.m. in the morning and start stirring?

The secret is that it has to be very cold. Freeze your glasses. It has to be very dry. Everybody has personal taste. My friend Alessandro Palazzi, who’s the famous bartender at Duke’s in London, says, “Anybody who says they make the best martini is an imbecile because everybody’s got different tastes.” But as far as I’m concerned, just a drop of vermouth in, stirred or shaken. I like a stirred martini. You can shake it, but don’t shake it like you’re trying to kill something inside the shaker. You are supposed to roll it, because you don’t want a cloudy, ice-chip-filled martini, but you want it to be very cold. Get it really cold and then a giant twist, not those little curlicue twists that they do sometimes. Those are worthless. You want a big, giant twist. You have to express the oil from the skin on top of the drink and then rub it on the lip, and drop it in, and you’ve got a perfect, beautiful martini. 

Wait, but I forgot the best part. You have to make it with Artingstall’s Brilliant London Dry Gin, which is my gin. There you go. Plug.