Actors Lisa Kudrow and Wyatt Russell, director Jeffrey Blitz, and producer Jennifer Dana sat down for a Q and A about their upcoming film ‘Table 19’ at Cinépolis Chelsea on Monday night.
‘Table 19,’ staring Anna Kendrick, Craig Robinson, June Squibb, Stephen Merchant, and Tony Revolori in addition to Kudrow and Russell, centers on a table of misfits at a wedding.
The moderator, likely speaking for the whole audience, started by stating that he wanted “a whole show” about about Lisa and Craig Robinson’s characters, a diner-owning couple at a low in their marriage. Of Robinson, Lisa said, “He’s just the most joyful person I’ve ever met. If there’s down time, he’s singing, and then Anna [Kendrick] joins in.”
Producer Jennifer Dana explained that the idea for the film was “based on an experience from another producer who had gone to a wedding, and had a crazy experience.” She added, “Smartly we reached out to Jeff, who reinvented it from page one.”
Jeffrey Blitz, director of the film and TV shows ‘Review’ and ‘Trial & Error,’ talked about what drew him to ‘Table 19.’ “Stories about people on the outside are stories that I enjoy,” he said. “After I started to like [the characters] I just wanted to spend more time with them.” He also took a dig at some of the movie’s extras, saying that in the film, Wyatt Russell sat “at a table of people who couldn’t act.”
Wyatt followed this up with an anecdote about one of his fellow table mates:
“There was one dude at the table—I don’t know if we saw him in the movie or not—he was so sweaty every day. Every day he came in more sweaty. Amanda and I would look at each other like, ‘Is this guy on fucking drugs or something?’ He’d get kind of weird, more crazy, and as the week went on, all of a sudden he was just gone. He wasn’t there any more. Some of the other people who had become friends at our table were like, “oh yea, he does a lot of drugs, and he went on some crazy bender over the weekend, and he’s gone. He’s out. He’s not coming back.”
Of course, no Q and A is complete without weird questions from the audience.
“Why did you feel that you needed to add a dog to this wedding?” One moviegoer asked with disdain.
“Uhhh, yea. I didn’t think of it like that exactly,” Blitz replied. But he still managed to salvage a reasonable response: “People that have lived long enough seem to arrive at an age where…whatever the social norms are, they don’t care about them any more.” With the character Jo, he “wanted to find ways to mark that–and that she would have a dog…When you bring a plus one to [a wedding], you bring someone you love. It made sense to me that she would bring her dog.”
Someone else asked Lisa how awkward or uncomfortable her shower scene with Craig was.
“Exactly; it was both. I’m very prudish, so I had to act,” she replied.
Photo courtesy of Facebook.
‘Table 19’ comes out March 3rd.
