Death of a Unicorn stars Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as a father and daughter who inadvertently discover that unicorns have miraculous healing powers.
The events unfold as they’re visiting Rudd’s character’s ultra-wealthy employer and his family, the Leopolds. Richard E. Grant, who plays the patriarch, told Yahoo Entertainment that they’re a parody of the Sacklers, the family behind Purdue Pharma, the company that has faced lawsuits regarding overprescription of addictive pharmaceutical drugs like OxyContin. Grant called them a “family of very entitled people who will do anything for a big buck.”
Though the movie takes on dark themes, the cast still managed to keep things humorous and whimsical behind the scenes. They agreed that the most memorable day on the set was filming a dinner scene in which Grant’s character eats “unicorn meat,” which was steak in real life.
“Richard E. Grant [ate] 17 steaks. I had never heard the term ‘meat slops’ before, but we were delirious, and everyone kept saying it,” Ortega told Yahoo Entertainment. “It lives in a deep fold in my brain.”
Rudd added that the rest of the cast was “standing around amazed at his commitment.”
“There’s a scene where he’s eating a steak, and you have to film scenes sometimes 20 times. So he maybe ate about 20 steaks. Even when he was offscreen,” he said with a laugh.
Téa Leoni, who plays the matriarch of the pharmaceutical dynasty, told Yahoo Entertainment she also accomplished an impressive gastric feat.
“I just want to say that you get a lot of credit because it’s meat, and that’s gross, but I had to eat like 85 blackberries,” she said to Grant. “I’m sorry, I was crapping for days. … I think we probably had a very different following three days. Mine was one way and yours was the other.”
“I’m not revealing my bowel movements to you,” Grant quipped.
Jessica Hynes, Téa Leoni, Will Poulter, Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega and Anthony Carrigan in Death of a Unicorn. (Murray Close/A24/Courtesy of Everett Collection)
Will Poulter, who played their son, joked that between the two actors, they “nailed” the Atkins diet.
Ortega said that hearing the film was called Death of a Unicorn and had both Rudd and Grant attached made it an “instantaneous yes” for her — one of the first of her career, along with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. She joked that she “jumped up and down and spun in a circle” at the chance to work with Rudd.
Poulter also said working with such established actors was “real pinch-me stuff.” Though the young actors were impressed by their co-stars, the cast quickly became close, goofing around on set.
“Oftentimes in between takes, we would place a wicker basket on the floor, open a pack of pistachios [and] eat the pistachios,” Rudd said. “Then we had a game trying to see how many pistachios we could get in this bucket. And then it turned into trick shots. Then it turned into hitting other people’s pistachios to keep them out.”
He joked that it “sustained us throughout the entirety of the shoot.” It became more complicated as filming went on.
“Whoever missed it, it reset the count, and so then that person was vilified,” Rudd said. “Will was really good at it. He started almost juggling the shells like a soccer ball. … Richard took it very seriously. If he missed, it was everyone’s problem.”
Whether it’s getting the “meat slops” or juggling pistachio shells, the cast bonded immensely. Ortega and Rudd went from being fans of each other’s work to vowing to collaborate in the future.
“From here on out, if there’s ever a chance that I would ever get to work with Jenna again, I would jump at that chance,” Rudd said. “And I would spin around.”
Death of a Unicorn is in theaters March 28.
