Key Points
Real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco play fictional married couple Millie and Tim in the upcoming horror film Together.
The duo had to spend hours a day on set physically attached to each other, which meant bathroom breaks were a group activity.
The actors say they wouldn’t have taken the roles if they weren’t starring together.
When you’ve been with someone for over a decade, personal boundaries have a way of fading. But for their new movie Together (in theaters July 30), Alison Brie and her husband, Dave Franco, took the idea of being attached at the hip to another level.
The duo stars as fictional married couple Millie and Tim in the upcoming horror film from first-time feature director Michael Shanks. And while the movie opens with the pair drifting apart, it’s not a major spoiler to say that they go on to become closer than ever in a literal, physical sense. Franco and Brie have said previously that they would not have wanted to act in the movie with anyone else, and when they explain what the roles entailed, it’s not hard to understand why.
“Well, first of all, physically, the movie was very demanding,” Brie tells Entertainment Weekly. “There were days that Dave and I were physically attached for several hours, going to the bathroom together. And things like that may have been awkward with people you’re not married to.”
But with his wife, Franco says, “Being literally attached to each other for half the day…was fun.”
“Even when we weren’t attached, the movie is very intense, and we were moving at a really quick speed to shoot the film,” Brie adds. “I think the shorthand that Dave and I have together, not just because we’re married, but because we’ve worked together so much, was really helpful in terms of keeping everything moving really quickly and us being on the same page and us being locked into these characters in their relationship.”
Courtesy of NEON
Alison Brie in ‘Together’
This was especially beneficial for Shanks, who shot his ambitious feature debut in just 21 days. “Them being a married couple in real life added so much,” the director shares. “There was such trust between them. They were so comfortable being vulnerable that our most difficult scenes (often involving emotional and physical intimacy) always flowed with ease. It’s clear how much they lift each other up and make each other even better.”
Still, both actors say Together was the most physically demanding project they’ve worked on.
“I have a collage of all my injuries from this film,” Franco says proudly. “We documented everything, but I think the worst was the rope burn on my hands where I walked away from that day with bandages over both hands. You don’t realize how much you use your hands until you can’t use your hands. But I definitely got beat up more on this film than anything I’ve ever done before.”
The rope incident occurred while filming a scene in which the actor had to climb out of a mysterious cave, and while the movie is rife with impressive visual effects, Franco did the stunt without any movie magic. “He climbed a rope using his bare hands and ripped them open so they were bleeding, and then did another take, climbing the rope with bloody hands,” Brie recalls.
“We planned on only doing one take, and then our director came up and said, ‘I’m so sorry, but someone’s shadow was in the shot. Would you mind doing it again?’ I was like, ‘All right, here we go,'” Franco says with a laugh.
“Prior to this job, I would say Glow was the most physical job I had done, but that was fun,” Brie says of the award-winning Netflix series about female wrestlers. “There was a prepared dose of comedy, and you’re working together. I think that this felt more intense because everything that’s happening physically is also super distressing to the characters. So there are heightened emotions that are happening simultaneously, and that is exhausting and also incredibly satisfying.”
She adds, “Dave and I were actually just texting the other day about how it always felt so good to finish every day shooting on this movie. We knew that we had left it all on the field.”
Franco also has plenty of experience with physical performances, but says Together “isn’t a normal action film where you maybe have choreographed moves that feel natural and things that feel athletic and whatnot. With this, our bodies are being contorted in very strange ways. And so you’re sore in places that you’ve never been sore before.”
Credit: Courtesy of NEON
Dave Franco in ‘Together’
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While the famous couple says they don’t have much in common with their onscreen counterparts, Shanks was inspired to write the story by his close bond with his partner. “I think when anyone is in a long-term relationship, there comes a point where you realise you have the same friends, eat the same food, breathe the same air — you start to wonder if you can truly tell where you end and your partner begins,” he says. “I thought that was a really compelling place to start to examine in a relationship — what if you took that old cliche of sharing a life and took it to somewhere visceral, and horrifically literal?”
Together certainly succeeds in the visceral and horrifically literal department, and its body horror elements will undoubtedly draw comparisons to another recent entry in the somewhat forgotten genre, The Substance. Still, Shanks believes he and the actors have accomplished something wholly unique with their new film.
“One of the things I most look for when I watch a film is to see something I’ve never seen before, and there are sequences in this where I truly believe we’ve pulled that off,” he says. “There was one sequence where, after each take, I was just hooting and hollering. I literally couldn’t believe anyone let me shoot something so over-the-top and revolting.”
After one take of that particular scene, Shanks says he asked Franco to go again, “but without the dry-retching,” to which the actor informed him, “That wasn’t acting.” The director says to both Brie and Franco, “Let us put them through hell on this film, and when you watch it, you’ll understand why.”
Brie agrees the film fits in the body horror genre, but is quick to note that even weak-stomached audiences will find plenty to enjoy in Together. “I would categorize this movie as body horror for sure, but it also has a lot of heart,” she says. “There’s almost a romantic component to it. I love that body horror is having a moment…but you have to update it. It has to evolve. And so this movie certainly is an evolution of that, and I think it will appeal to people who are not even into body horror.”
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
