Zoe Kazan Archives – CULTURE MIX

Review: ‘She Said,’ starring Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton and Ashley Judd

October 13, 2022

by Carla Hay

Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan in “She Said” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/Universal Pictures)

Directed by Maria Schrader

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in 2016 and 2017, primarily in New York City (and briefly in California, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Italy), the dramatic film “She Said” (based on real events) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey investigate sexual abuse allegations against entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein and help usher in a new era in the #MeToo movement.

Culture Audience: “She Said” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching well-acted historical dramas about investigative journalism and seeking justice for crimes.

Wesley Holloway, Jennifer Ehle and Justine Colan in “She Said” (Photo by JoJo Whilden/Universal Pictures)

With the tone and pace of a procedural crime drama, “She Said” uncovers nothing new about The New York Times’ 2017 report that helped spur the downfall of Harvey Weinstein, who went from being a powerful mogul in the entertainment industry to becoming an imprisoned, convicted rapist. However, the movie’s top-notch cast members (including a terrific Samantha Morton in a standout supporting role) deliver better-than-average performances in this important story that needs to be told. It’s a very female-driven movie that puts the narrative where it belongs: on Weinstein’s abuse survivors who had the courage to speak to The New York Times for this groundbreaking report, as well as the two women who investigated and wrote this report.

Directed by Maria Schrader and written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, “She Said” is adapted from the 2019 non-fiction book “She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement,” written by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the two New York Times reporters who investigated and wrote the report that exposed accusations against Weinstein for crimes and misdeeds against women, spanning several decades as far back as the 1980s. The report, which was published in October 2017, included detailed accounts of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault alleged by a variety of women, including some of Weinstein’s former employees, famous actresses (such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd) and various other colleagues. “She Said” had its world premiere at the 2022 New York Film Festival in New York City.

“She Said” opens with a flashback to 1992. In this scene, a 21-year-old female production assistant is on a film set in Ireland. She comes across as an eager and friendly employee who’s happy to be at her job and enjoys being around her co-workers. The movie then abruptly shifts to showing her running in fear on a city street, as if she’s just experienced something terrifying.

It’s at this point you know that this woman has become one of Weinstein’s sexual abuse victims. In 1992, Weinstein (who co-founded Miramax Films and later The Weinstein Company) was on the rise in the industry as a movie producer and studio chief. He would eventually win an Academy Award for Best Picture, for 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love.”

Later on in “She Said,” which takes place mostly in 2016 and 2017, viewers find out that this frightened young woman’s name is Zelda Perkins. And 25 years after her horrifying experience with Weinstein left her with deep trauma and disillusionment about the entertainment industry, Zelda (played by Morton) is ready to tell her story to The New York Times. It’s by far the best scene in the movie. She declares, “This is bigger than Weinstein. This is about the system protecting abusers.”

“She Said” goes step-by-step in showing how Jodi Kantor (played by Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (played by Carey Mulligan) ended up working together on this landmark investigation which helped bring a surge to the #MeToo movement and garnered a Pulitzer Prize for Kantor and Twohey. (For the purpose of this review, the movie characters will be referred to by their first names, while the real-life people will be referred to by their last names.) Someone who is briefly mentioned (but never shown) in the movie is investigative journalist Ronan Farrow, who also won a Pultizer Prize for his own Weinstein exposé that The New Yorker published a day after The New York Times’ report. “She Said” portrays Farrow’s report as something that Jodi and Megan were aware was happening simultaneously, but Farrow’s competing report did not distract Jodi and Megan from their own investigation.

Jodi’s and Megan’s respective personal lives are shown tangentially for context reasons, in order to give viewers an idea of how this investigation affected their lives outside of their jobs. Jodi and Megan both have loving, supportive husbands (Jodi’s journalist husband Ron Lieber is played by Adam Shapiro; Megan’s literary-agent husband Vadim “Jim” Rutman is played by Tom Pelphrey), but the women are at different stages in their lives when it comes to motherhood.

At the beginning of the investigation, Jodi had two daughters under the age of 12, while Megan was a mother of a newborn child. (Elle Graham has the role of Jodi and Ron’s older daughter Gracie, while Maren Heary has the role of younger daughter Nell.) Their struggles with post-partum depression are mentioned in the movie when Megan confides in Jodi about having post-partum depression, and Jodi reveals that she had this type of depression too.

“She Said” also shows that while Jodi was enthusiastic about pursuing the investigation from the beginning, Megan was more skeptical and reluctant, because many of their sources refused to go on the record, usually because they signed non-disclosure agreements with Weinstein in exchange for a monetary settlement, and/or the accusers feared retaliation. The movie takes on sinister qualities when it shows that Megan and Jodi (and some of their sources) were stalked and threatened by unidentified men who were believed to have been hired by Weinstein.

Slowly but surely, through in-person visits to interview many of the survivors in person, Jodi and Megan begin to get a growing number of women who were willing to go on the record. Judd portrays herself in the scenes where she interacts with Megan and Jodi. In real life and in the movie, Judd tells her story about how Weinstein had her blackballed from getting jobs after she rejected his sexual advances.

Two other key witnesses come forward to help with the investigation: former Weinstein employees Rowena Chiu (played by Angela Yeoh) and Laura Madden (played by Jennifer Ehle), a mother of two underage children, who was also dealing with the recent news that she would have to get a mastectomy due to her breast cancer. (Justine Colan has the role of Laura’s daughter Iris, while Wesley Holloway has the role of Laura’s son Hywel.) Yeoh and Ehle both make an impact with their admirable performances.

Jodi, the more emotionally sensitive reporter of the duo, is described by Megan at one point in the movie as “less intimidating” than Megan because Jodi is shorter and looks more approachable. There’s a well-performed scene where Jodi makes a big mistake in revealing some information to Rowena’s husband that could derail a possible interview with Rowena. Jodi is distraught by this mistake, in a powerful scene that shows the human fallibility that can happen in investigative journalism.

Megan considers herself to be a more seasoned and more jaded reporter than Jodi. Megan doesn’t like to show emotional vulnerability, but she goes through more of an emotional rollercoaster due to her post-partum depression, which she tries to hide from her colleagues, in order not to be perceived as “weak” or “incompetent.” It’s an issue that many mothers in the workforce go through in real life, and it’s handled with tasteful respect in “She Said,” with Mulligan giving a nuanced performance.

The movie also depicts some of the rejections that Jodi and Megan received from potential sources who ultimately were too afraid or uninterested in going on the record with The New York Times. And the movie also depicts some of Weinstein’s enablers, including attorney Lisa Bloom (played by Anastasia Barzee), who tarnished her feminist image when she was hired to be a paid consultant to do damage control for Weinstein. Bloom also had a book deal with Weinstein. John Schmidt (played John Mazurek), who worked for Weinstein as a chief financial officer, and attorney Lanny Davis (played by Peter Friedman), who used to be one of Weinstein’s consultants, are shown having guilt-ridden reckonings when they are confronted by Megan and Jodi about their active participation in covering up Weinstein’s abuses.

The New York Times is portrayed as approaching this story meticulously, with supportive editors who demanded a high level of accountability and evidence before publishing the report. Patricia Clarkson has a generic role as New York Times assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett. Andre Braugher has the flashier supervisor role as New York Times managing editor Dean Baquet, who has some of the best scenes in the movie in showing how he’s not intimidated by a bully like Weinstein.

As for any portrayal of Weinstein, “She Said” wisely relegates him to just being mostly a voice, with a brief glimpses of an actor (Mike Houston) portraying Weinstein on screen, such as when he walks in a public area with members of his team. There’s a scene where Weinstein threatens Dean with legal action against The New York Times because of the investigation that he knows will expose dark secrets. In response, Dean tells Weinstein that if he wants to make any statements on the record, Weinstein needs to talk directly to Jodi and Megan.

“She Said” also includes the 2015 real-life audio recording of Weinstein trying and failing to coerce actress/model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez into his hotel suite, a day after she says he sexually groped her without her consent. She reported this crime to the New York Police Department, which investigated Weinstein for that incident at the time, but no charges were filed against him. It’s an example of how not all of Weinstein’s accusers waited years to come forward to report Weinstein’s alleged sexual misconduct against them. The movie shows in no uncertain terms that those who did go public before 2017 were silenced or ignored.

Also getting a “voice only” depiction in “She Said” is actress/activist Rose McGowan (voiced by Keilly McQuail), who is shown declining to be interviewed by The New York Times about her accusation that Weinstein raped her, because she says she felt mistreated by The New York Times in the past. In real life, McGowan would go on the record with Farrow for his coverage for The New Yorker. “She Said” also has a scene of Megan and Jodi going to Paltrow’s California home to interview this Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love” actress, but Paltrow is also just a phone voice in the movie. (Near the beginning of the movie, there’s also voice cameo from an actor portraying Donald Trump, who calls Megan in 2016, during his presidential campaign, to tell her that she’s a “disgusting human being” for reporting sexual harassment allegations against Trump.)

Early on in “She Said,” the movie acknlowedges that Weinstein’s downfall happened after the April 2017 downfall of former Fox News talk show host Bill O’Reilly over sexual harassment allegations. Sarah Anne Masse, who is one of Weinstein’s real-life accusers (she claims he sexually harassed her in a job interview), has a cameo role as New York Times reporter Emily Steel, who helped break the story about O’Reilly’s alleged sexual misconduct. Steel and Michael S. Schmidt co-wrote the New York Times report that exposed how News Corp. (the parent company of Fox News) paid at least $13 million to settle sexual-harassment complaints made against O’Reilly, who was eventually fired from Fox News when advertisers boycotted his show. (That settlement total is now estimated to be at least $32 million.)

“She Said” might get some comparisons to the Oscar-winning 2015 drama “Spotlight,” which was about the Boston Globe’s 2001-2002 investigation of the Catholic Church covering up priests’ sexual abuse for decades. In real life, that Boston Globe report also won a Pulitzer Prize, but “Spotlight” was very much about a male-majority team of journalists (with one token woman) doing the investigating. “She Said” is much more streamlined, because there is only one main sexual abuser being investigated, although the movie does hammer home the point many times that Weinstein was aided by a system that allowed him to get away with his crimes for years.

None of this information is surprising to anyone who followed the Weinstein scandal and the aftermath of what was reported in The New York Times and The New Yorker. There have been countless news reports and some documentaries of the same subject matter. What will resonate with viewers the most in “She Said” is exactly what the title of the movie promises: Instead of making the villain the center of the story (which true-crime movies tend to do), “She Said” is all about celebrating the bravery and fortitude of the women survivors who came forward to tell their truths, and the people who helped bring some measure of justice to stop Weinstein’s reign of terror.

Universal Pictures will release “She Said” in U.S. cinemas on November 18, 2022.

Review: ‘The Kindness of Strangers,’ starring Zoe Kazan, Andrea Riseborough, Tahar Rahim, Caleb Landry Jones, Jay Baruchel and Bill Nighy

February 14, 2020

by Carla Hay

“The Kindness of Strangers”

Directed by Lone Scherfig

Culture Representation: Taking place primarily in New York City, the dramatic film “The Kindness of Strangers” has a predominantly white cast of characters representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: Six strangers find themselves connected in some way when a suburban housewife takes her two young sons to New York City to escape from her abusive husband.

Culture Audience: This movie will appeal mostly to fans of independent dramas with multiple layers to the story, but the ludicrous contrivances in the screenplay will irritate people who are expecting a story with more realism and substance.

Caleb Landry Jones and Andrea Riseborough in “The Kindness of Strangers” (Photo by Per Arnesen)

If you’re someone who disliked the 2005 Oscar-winning movie “Crash” (one of the most controversial Best Picture wins in Oscar history), then you’ll really despise the drama “The Kindness of Strangers.” The movie takes a concept that’s similar to “Crash”—several strangers in a big city are connected in some way to each other and eventually meet—and makes it even more trite and ridiculous at the same time.

In “The Kindness of Strangers,” the big city is New York (“Crash” took place in Los Angeles), home to thousands of restaurants. But apparently one restaurant—a fairly upscale Russian eatery called the New York Winter Palace—is the go-to place in town for people to have their problems solved. But first, here’s a summary of the six strangers who end up being connected in the story.

Clara is a housewife who lives in Buffalo, New York, but in the dead of night, she’s left her home with her two young sons—older son Anthony (played by Jack Zulton) and younger son Jude (played by Finlay Wojtak-Hissong)—by driving to New York City. The reason for the secret trip? She’s escaped from her physically and emotionally abusive husband Richard (played by Esben Smed), who’s also been abusing the kids. She won’t go to the police or a domestic-abuse shelter because her husband is a cop, and she’s afraid that he’ll find her.

Alice (played by Andrea Riseborough) is an emergency-room nurse who never seems to go home because she’s always popping up in the story at the right momement to “rescue” someone. Not only is she a nurse, but she also does a lot of volunteer work at a church, where she leads a forgiveness support group. She’s also a regular customer at the New York Winter Palace.

Timofey (played by Bill Nighy) is the owner of the New York Winter Palace, which he inherited from his Russian grandfather. Timofey is American, but he fakes a Russian accent when he’s on the job. He has a droll sense of humor and a “seen it all before” attitude toward life.

Marc (played by Tahar Rahim) has recently been released from prison, where he spent a little more than three years on drug-related charges. His brother was a drug addict who eventually overdosed and whose drug activity got Marc arrested and wrongfully convicted. (Marc was in the wrong place at the wrong time.) Near the beginning of the story, Marc meets with Timofey and some of his restaurant colleagues, and convinces them to hire him as a manager of the New York Winter Palace.

John Peter (played by Jay Baruchel) is Marc’s defense attorney. He’s become somewhat jaded over his job, because he says he hates defending clients he knows are guilty. He’s part of the forgiveness support group led by Alice. And after Marc gets out of prison, he accompanies John Peter to the support group too. However, every time Marc goes to the group meetings, he insists he doesn’t really need counseling and he’s just there to be supportive of John Peter.

Jeff (played by Caleb Landry Jones) is a screw-up who can’t seem to keep a job because he keeps making dumb mistakes. He also has a nasty temper, because when he’s fired from a mattress-selling job, he takes a chair and smashes a window with the chair, while his supervisor and co-workers watch in shock. Jeff is four months behind on his rent and is close to being evicted.

When viewers first see Clara and her sons in New York City, she tells them they’re taking a fun vacation. At first, she’s able to fool them into thinking that it’s an adventure and they don’t have to go back to school because “New York is going to be kind of a school for you.” But then reality sinks in (her money starts to run out) and she resorts to stealing to get money for food and other essentials.

Clara steals a designer dress and purse to sneak into upscale parties at hotels and restaurants, where she shovels some of the party food in a bag when no one is looking. One of the places where she ends up stealing food is the New York Winter Palace, where she pretends she’s part of a big family that’s throwing a party there. Marc the manager strikes up a conversation with Clara and seems a little suspicious of her story, especially when he later sees her behind the coat-check desk where the coat checker should be. Clara ended up stealing a coat, and Marc narrowly missed seeing her commit this theft before she quickly left the restaurant.

Meanwhile, broke Jeff is confronted by his landlord, who tells Jeff that he won’t wait anymore for the rent that’s four months overdue. The landlord tells Jeff that he has one hour to leave the apartment. This demand is not only very unrealistic, but it’s also very illegal. Anyone who knows anything about New York City’s eviction laws knows that evicting a tenant is a drawn-out legal process that isn’t done in one day.

But this movie isn’t concerned about details like that, because it would ruin the set-up for homeless Jeff to end up at a soup kitchen, where (you guessed it) saintly Alice happens to be working right at that moment. She gets Jeff to help out in serving people at the soup kitchen in exchange for him getting free meals.

Meanwhile, the situation for Clara and her sons has gone from bad to worse. Clara has taken her husband Richard’s car (which he could easily report as stolen), but the car is towed away because she parked in the wrong zone and has too many unpaid parking tickets. Clara and her sons had been living in the car and now need to find shelter. And it’s the middle of an ice-cold winter, don’t you know, so that makes the situation even more pitiful.

Clara and the kids end up at the soup kitchen, where (surprise) Alice happens to be working. And then later, the family is really desperate for a place to stay, but Clara doesn’t want to go to a homeless shelter, so they end up at the church again where (surprise) Alice happens to be there too, right after she’s finished her support group meeting. Alice takes pity on Clara and the kids and offers them a room at the church for the night, even though it’s against the church rules. But wait, there’s more “coincidental” drama.

Clara and the kids barely have spent the night at the church when something almost tragic happens that involves someone being taken to the same hospital where Alice works and (surprise) she happens to be on duty that night too. And then Alice decides to break someone out of the hospital, even though it’s something that would get her fired and there are probably security cameras in the hospital that would catch her doing it.

And somewhere in this story, Clara ends up hiding underneath a table at the New York Winter Palace, where she’s seen by Marc, who doesn’t kick her out because he’s attracted to her. He lets her stay hidden under the table, as he serves her Russian food on the restaurant’s finest serving platters that he leaves on the floor like someone feeding a dog.

And then Clara finally comes to her senses and does something she should’ve done a long time ago: Decide to get a lawyer. She asks Marc if he knows any good lawyers. You already know who he recommends, even though John Peter’s specialty isn’t family law.

“The Kindness of Strangers,” written and directed by Lone Scherfig, is the kind of movie where the cast members’ acting isn’t the problem. (Although Nighy’s and Rahim’s American accents aren’t very convincing.) The biggest problem is the jumbled and hackneyed screenplay that has little regard for viewers’ intelligence.

The movie also takes the serious issue of domestic abuse and cynically uses it as just another plot device to connect the dots between these characters. And there are little details that indicate sloppy writing, such as a scene where incompetent and dim-witted Jake (of all people) puts someone on an ambulance gurney, when in reality an EMT or trained medical professional, not an untrained person, is required to do that.

Scherfig is capable of doing much better films (her Oscar-nominated 2009 drama “An Education” was one of the best movies of that year), so hopefully “The Kindness of Strangers” is not an indication that the quality of her work will continue to go downhill. “The Kindness of Strangers” isn’t the worst film you might ever see. It’s just not a very good movie, and you won’t feel much sympathy for the characters who make very bad decisions.

Vertical Entertainment released “The Kindness of Strangers” in select U.S. cinemas and on VOD on February 14, 2020.

Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Ray Romano, Holly Hunter navigate love and medical illness in ‘The Big Sick’

June 23, 2017

by Carla Hay

Barry Mendel, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Gordon, Anupam Kher and Zoe Kazan at the New York City press conference for "The Big Sick" — Barry Mendel, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Gordon, Anupam Kher and Zoe Kazan at the New York City press conference for “The Big Sick” (Photo by Carla Hay)

Based on the real-life courtship between screenwriters Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, the comedy film “The Big Sick” tells the story of Pakistan-born aspiring comedian Kumail (played by Nanjiani), who connects with grad student Emily (played by Zoe Kazan) after one of his stand-up sets. However, what they thought would be just a one-night stand blossoms into the real thing, which complicates the life that is expected of Kumail by his traditional Muslim parents (played by Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff), who want him to enter into an arranged marriage with a woman of Pakistani heritage.

When Emily is beset with a mysterious illness that leaves her in a coma, it forces Kumail to navigate the medical crisis with her parents, Beth and Terry (played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano), whom he’s never met before, while dealing with the emotional tug-of-war between his family and his heart. “The Big Sick” was directed by Michael Showalter, written by Gordon and Nanjiani, and produced by Judd Apatow and Barry Mendel. Here is what Nanjiani, Gordon, Kazan, Hunter, Romano, Kher and Mendel said when they gathered for a New York City press conference for “The Big Sick.”

From L to R: Kumail Nanjiani, Writer Emily V. Gordon and Zoe Kazan on the set of “The Big Sick” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Barry, what was it like to make a real-life story into a movie?

Mendel: Judd [Apatow] met Kumail at South by Southwest, and Kumail came in and told Judd and me the story. And Judd and I were moved by it. At the time, Kumail wasn’t the star of a big, successful show.

Nanjiani: Yeah, this was a year before the show [“Silicon Valley”].

Mendel: Our attitude was like, “This movie might end up costing $800,000 to make. It might be a very, very small movie.” We just loved the idea of trying to tell the story and do a good job on the film. There have been lots and lots of stories that people try and take from their true life and put on screen. Most of the time, it doesn’t go well. For us, it was a great challenge.

I think everybody has been in situation where you’re in a medical crisis, or you’re just in a very serious situation. It is surprising that some of the greatest moments of humor in your whole life can come out of those situations. Kumail, as a comedian, in the way he told the story, he was not going to shy away from what was serious about it but also able to find the humanity or at least where humor is a release valve for the intensity for what you’re feeling. It’s really consistent with a lot of the work that Judd’s done, that I’ve done—separately and together. It just seemed like it would be ripe with possibilities.

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon on the set of “The Big Sick” (Photo by Sarah Shatz)

Kumail and Emily, at what point were you able to extract yourselves and say about your story, “Hey, other people might find this interesting”?

Gordon: I think early on. Judd and Barry were very good about us not wanting to be precious about our own story. It went from our story to a story that everybody could collaborate on, that everybody had input in, that everybody could hopefully watch and enjoy. So Barry and Michael Showalter were very, very good about encouraging us to always have the emotional truth of things but always make sure that we were changing things to make the more dramatic or funnier while keeping an emotional truth to it.

Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan in “The Big Sick” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Studios)

Kumail, were you concerned about taking a comedic approach to something so dramatic as Emily’s life-threatening illness?

Nanjiani: Yeah, that was always going to be the challenge that we were talking about in the beginning. It was mostly me and Emily’s parents just sitting there with hurricanes in our heads, but our faces were [he makes a stoic face]. So we knew our challenge was going to be to make it funny. But what Barry did from the very beginning was say, “Don’t worry about the funny just yet. Write it, and we’ll put the jokes on at the end.”

Holly Hunter in “The Big Sick” ( Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Holly, what was your starting point to playing Emily’s mother?

Hunter: It’s a testament to the over-arching confidence that manifests its way through the whole movie. Judd and Barry and Kumail and Emily, they walked through fire to put this down on paper. It couldn’t have been an easy thing to accomplish. You did all that work with Barry and Judd. And then we [the other actors] come along, and we’ve got all these ideas …

And then there was this overall process of accepting all of those ideas and seeing if they would fly. We had a really intense rehearsal period with the script where we were really going through the script and going through our ideas that would be additional, that might make the scenes even richer, more complicated. And that’s not always received as openly as it was with this project.

Mendel: We envy Mike Leigh, who goes off into the countryside and has his actors in a barn for a month to just talk about the script. You do a lot of that in the theater too, when you’re working on a play and getting it into shape to put it on the stage. So that’s our fantasy in all the movies that we do—to do that, so the actors can get a greater ownership of the part than, “Here, I’m going to execute the part as it was written.”

Also to make the movie feel lived in, which I think is a hard thing to do. I think a lot of movies, you watch them, and they feel like they’re fake. I think one of the things we strive to do—and because the acting is so good we were able to achieve it—is to make it feel lived in and real.

Ray Romano in “The Big Sick” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Ray, this isn’t a traditional comedic role for you. How did you figure that out for yourself?

Romano: There’s plenty of comedy in it. I got the script, and I read the role. I knew it was a real story. I knew the characters of Emily’s parents were open to interpretation. I just went out writing a little back story for the guy, and I sent it to the director, and I sent it to Barry.

I was able to make up this guy. I knew this wasn’t about researching Emily’s father. I found out he doesn’t look like me. I’ll tell you how I found out. Emily said that her mother watched the movie and said, “You know Holly Hunter is prettier than me, but your father is more handsome than Ray Romano.”

Gordon: Kumail told you that. I would have never told you that.

Nanjiani: I’m glad I’m giving you new material.

Romano: So that’s how I approached the character. I thought of how her father would really do it, and then I would just do it as if he were ugly.

Zoe Kazan in “The Big Sick”(Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Zoe, you’ve been a first-time screenwriter. How did it feel to portray someone in a movie who is the movie’s first-time screenwriter in real life?

Kazan: Because my parents are both screenwriters, and because I came up as an actor in the theater, I was drilled that the text is sacred, and it’s your job as an actor to fulfill the text and not alter the text. On previous projects, I felt sort of uncomfortable with some of the improv. I definitely get some of the rehearsal process that’s been alluded to earlier did have a creative aspect to it …

What drew me in from the start was the script. It wasn’t like it needed anything, but I felt that process actually helped me come to feel that I had intended to put some of myself into it as well so it didn’t feel like I was trespassing on someone else’s life all the time. And I think that allowed me to feel a little bit more comfortable making it my own on set, and not worrying about having Emily at the monitors watching what I was doing. In fact, what I came to feel like was that we were co-parents of the character—which I guess you’re always doing as an actor: you become co-parents or co-guardians of the character on the screen.

Anupam Kher in “The Big Sick” ( Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Anupam, how did working on this American independent film differ from your other film experiences?

Kher: I did this film not for my acting abilities but for emotional reasons … I met [Kumail’s] father for the role, and it was wonderful. I said, “How do you want me to prepare for the role?” And he said, “Just grow your beard. My father has one.” Sometimes, that’s how it goes. Sometimes in life, you have to do things for emotional reasons, not professional reasons. I think that was important.

Kumail Nanjiani and Judd Apatow on the set of “The Big Sick” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Kumail, what was the most difficult thing about playing yourself? And how did you find that emotional truth?

Nanjiani: Barry and Judd were really helpful. Once we’d gotten our story down, they were like, “Now you have to separate yourself from the story, and trust that the emotional core will stay, and just make it a good story.” The most difficult thing about the acting was most of the stuff about Emily’s illness toward the middle-end part of the movie.

Gordon: It was kind of nice to have so many people weigh in on it, because the actual story got back to being our story. It helped me feel more okay.

Nanjiani: Mike [Showalter] would say to us often, “Separate yourself from this.” I think Emily understood that before I did.

Gordon: It really made the movie better, I think.

Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani on the set of “The Big Sick” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Kumail and Emily, in revisiting this part of your lives, what did you learn about yourself that surprised you?

Nanjiani: Emily was always really honest in the relationship, so there weren’t really any surprises there. What was surprising to me was talking to her friends while writing [“The Big Sick” script] and finding out what she had been saying to her friends about me. I didn’t know that she thought it took me forever to say, “I love you.” I didn’t know that was expected of me after [a certain amount of dates]. And also, she would tell her friends things about me and they would think, “This guy sounds like a nightmare.”

Gordon: On paper, you were a real mess.

Shenaz Treasury, Adeel Akhtar, Anupam Kher and Kumail Nanjiani in “The Big Sick” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

To the non-South Asians in the cast, before you did this movie, how much were you aware of how much a grown man could be scared of his family if he didn’t enter into a marriage arranged by the family?

Romano: A little. I was wondering about the authenticity of that. The fact that he was actually afraid of losing his family was something I had to realize was a truth. I can see it’s a real thing.

Kazan: I had seen a tiny bit online some South Asian women saying, “Where’s our representation in this movie, just based on the trailer?” I think the movie has a better representation than the trailer. I just want to say that. Give this movie a chance.

I know Kumail and Emily talked about the casting of those parts and the embarrassment of riches of the actors that came in, and how hard it was to pick just the few that were in the movie. There aren’t enough roles for women of color in general in our industry.

And a lot of that falls on the responsibility of people like Barry and Judd—not Barry and Judd, but people like them. They make the stuff to finance films that have more rules that provide a wider representation. Sometimes those conversations can become very industry-oriented. We have to give those actors and actresses a chance. It’s really about the storytelling that is being done.

What kinds of stories can you tell if you extend past your tiny circle of comfort? I think it’s better in our humanity to have a wider representation in our culture not only because it allows those people to fell more represented on screen but also it allows people who feel very foreign to people who are Pakistani-American open then to that world.

Kher: What makes Kumail’s character endearing and more connected is because he takes care of his parents also. I think that quality makes [Kumail’s] character much more enriching and much more endearing. He listens to his parents. Also, I think arranged marriage has a lot to do with education. That’s why arranged marriages are done.

Romano: We don’t have arranged marriages in this country, but my wife’s family, if I was not Italian, they would not have welcomed me as much. I dated a Jewish girl whose family [had issues with me not being Jewish].

Holly Hunter, Ray Romano and Kumail Nanjiani in “The Big Sick” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

To the actors who played the parents, is there anything you brought to the roles that you have experienced in real life as parents?

Kher: Compassion. I think the most misunderstood relationship in the world is the father/son relationship, because both of them hold unnecessary evils. I feel a lot of compassion. The easiest thing in the world is to criticize a son … When I did all the scenes with Kumail, the only thing I felt for him was love. And if a parent conveys that love to his child, I think that makes it easier. But I think we like conflict as parents.

Romano: I think it’s easy for me to criticize my sons. I have a daughter and three boys, and they deserve criticism. They’re good, but they’re not as good as I am. I have a daughter who’s 26, who’s kind of the age of the character, so it’s kind of easy for me to tap into that fear of having her in this situation. It was pretty organic.

Kurt Braunohler, Michael Showalter, Emily V. Gordon, Kumail Nanjiani, Judd Apatow and Barry Mendel on the set of “The Big Sick” (Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

Kumail and Emily, was there anything that happened on “The Big Sick” set that exemplified keeping things honest?

Nanjiani: There were a lot of times when she would write a scene or she would write a scene, and the other person was like, “That’s not how I experienced it.” We were able to put in both of those perspectives.

Gordon: Once we were on set, we were on the same page.

Nanjiani: We had written the script about three-and-a-half years ago at that point.

Gordon: Kumail was kind of struggling with being an actor and writer and producer [for this movie], so we developed a code word that we used when we had to worry about production stuff. He just needed to be an actor. Go do what actors do. Hang out in a trailer.

Nanjiani: We didn’t have trailers. “Go hang out in your hospital room.”

Gordon: All of us wanted [Kumail] to focus on his job, which was to lead this movie. That was the biggest thing we had on set.

Holly Hunter and Ray Romano in “The Big Sick”(Photo by Nicole Rivelli)

To the actors, did you have any question that you asked the writers that you think helped keep your characters authentic?

Hunter: I was thinking about things that attracted me to the movie. Of course, there were many unexpected things. In Act Two, the movie does veer into the revelation of characters. And it becomes this other love story between this couple [Emily’s parents] and Kumail. It becomes a love story between the three of them and how they learn to love each other.

So much of what’s funny in my life is juvenile or infantile. And the movie also skates on that level too, which makes it so much fun. But I loved the adult relationship of my and Ray’s characters’ relationship. We wanted it to stay adult. [The screenwriters] never, really truly jeopardized the relationship. I never thought, “This couple is never going to make it. This couple is going to be fine.” That’s how I felt from the beginning. I felt so grateful for that. They have an incredible bond together, and they’re going through this bond with their daughter in jeopardy with a great amount of grace and intimacy. The conflict there [between Beth and Terry] is a beautiful one that a lot of married couples relate to.