Melissa McCarthy & Chris ODowd Interview The Starling

Melissa McCarthy & Chris O’Dowd Interview: The Starling

The Starling stars Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd chat about exploring grief and joy in equal measure while filming their new Netflix film.

You Are Reading :[thien_display_title]

The Starling, which is premiering in select theaters on September 17 before being made available on Netflix on September 17, is a film that threads the needle between tragedy and comedy. The story centers on Lily and James, played by frequent collaborators Melissa McCarthy (Nine Perfect Strangers) and Chris O’Dowd (How To Build A Girl), who struggle emotionally in the wake of their daughter’s death.

Lily is an eternal optimist, but she finds herself falling behind at work as she juggles the weight of her own suppressed grief with her trips to visit Jack at his treatment facility. Jack, meanwhile, tries to come to terms with his pain for his wife’s sake but struggles with the depression that has followed him over the course of his lifetime. In the middle of this difficult time, an unruly starling bird flies into Lily’s garden and starts antagonizing her – ultimately leading her to seek help from a psychologist turned veterinarian named Larry (Kevin Kline, Bob’s Burgers).

McCarthy and O’Dowd spoke to Screen Rant about reuniting with director Ted Melfi and their love of intimate stories about people and their emotions.

Screen Rant: We only get one scene of Lily and Jack pre-tragedy, and yet we are rooting for them the whole time to get back to that one scene. Melissa, can you talk about building that dynamic with Chris and making it feel like a lived-in marriage?

Melissa McCarthy: I think it’s easy with Chris. He’s just a wonderful guy, and he’s an exceptional actor. I think we have history, which I think is a bonus – this is our third thing together. There’s just an ease when someone is really open; it’s the greatest gift you can have as an actor. It’s less about what you’re doing and what your partner’s doing, so it’s easy to have those moments of levity that the film delightfully has.

See also  Big Brother Nicole F Jokes Son Will Both Win Show & Be America’s Fave

I don’t think you can really show such pathos unless you have it. You can’t have the dark without the light, I think, when you’re telling stories. And it’s really easy to do that with Chris, because he is really fun and really funny, and then for moments that are really trying, he’s also incredibly empathetic. You know that he’s there for you, in character and as the man he is himself.

And so is Ted Melfi. It helps when your director is really in it with you, so I was fortunate in many different ways.

Jack really goes through an internal journey trying to make peace with his emotional state. What was it like for you to explore his depression?

Chris O’Dowd: Frankly, difficult enough. It’s hard enough to get to grips with. I’ve never experienced terribly bad depression, but I’ve been around a lot of people who have.

I remember talking in the early days of making the film about how to make the depression not feel like it was something passive because my experience with people who were depressed is it does feel like it’s very active. It has a very active effect on people’s lives; it feels like they’re being pushed down rather than not able to get up.

And this is somebody who has been dealing with it even before the tragedy. And so you try, I suppose, to bring as much of that into the character as you can and to the character’s choices. Even the fact that he has ended up with somebody who is so gloriously positive probably isn’t an accident but speaks to something of the hope that he has to be able to get through it. That he is at least looking in the right place for solutions.

See also  10 Most Infamous Canceled Xbox Games Ranked

You both got to work with Ted before in St. Vincent. What’s it like to this family reunion?

Melissa McCarthy: It’s great. It’s really hard to tell stories about people. It’s hard to get them made, and it’s hard to get the money for them. People want explosions or perfect people or superheroes – and, by the way, I root for all of them. But I think if we lose our stories about people, we lose our audience being able to see themselves up there.

It’s when we tell stories of ourselves, and people can relate to them, that we can have this shared experience – that we all have grief, that we all have loss, and that we all have joy and can all come out on the other side of it. And that’s the thing that tethers us as humans.

Ted, maybe yesterday, was saying, “This started sitting around a campfire.” We have always told each other stories, and there’s a reason. It’s not just entertainment; it’s something to connect to. It’s memories. It’s shared emotions, and I think Ted is exceptional at it. He’s bold and delicate and unsentimental, all at the same time. Those are really hard things to juggle, and he does it beautifully.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/starling-movie-melissa-mccarthy-chris-odowd-interview/

Movies -