Alison Brie

Dimitri: Congratulations on your new project, Spin Me Round. I really enjoyed it. What made you attracted to film in Italy?

Alison: This is really to the credit of Jeff Baena, my co-writer and our director, because we shot a film together like five years ago, The Little Hours that we shot in Italy. It was such a good experience and the people were really welcoming and the locations were so beautiful. I feel like right away, production value really ticks up because you can turn the camera any direction. It just looks so gorgeous. He had had this idea for a while, I think, to just try to get back. He was trying to think of anything to get back to Italy. In the interim, before this project came together, we made another movie together called Horse Girl that we shot in Los Angeles. That was such a wonderful experience that, at the end of that, he said, “I have this idea for another Italy movie.” He told me a little bit about the idea, which was just the broad strokes of a group of managers going to Italy for this program, and it not being what it seems. Then with COVID and the shutdown, we had all this time during quarantine, so we ended up just writing the script.

Dimitri: I’m not going to give away the ending, but it’s really fun. Can tell me, who came up with the idea of this kind of an ending?

Alison: Thank you. It was just an idea about the bores and then we were able to weave things together from there. I think we both are really drawn to these kinds of stories that start out a little bit mundane and then spin out of control, no pun intended.

If you look at the films that we’ve done together, his film The Little Hours and then Horse Girl, I would say that they follow a similar trajectory where you think you’re just following these characters and it really ramps up over the course of the film. That type of writing excites me, I think. As a filmgoer, I’m always excited to see things that are unexpected and a little different, and a little wild. That was certainly part of that with this.

Also, I think just following the character trajectory, so much of this movie is about the desire for adventure. We see my character, Amber, and the expectations she has for this trip. When they’re not going the way she thought, she starts creating her own adventure and we see her go through these different versions of what Americans think of what European travel is like because of movies and things like that. She’s going through her different versions of the movies. First, she’s starring in a romance movie, and then she’s starring in a sensual movie on her adventure with Kat, played by Aubrey Plaza, and then she’s in a thriller.

Dimitri: I interviewed Aubrey recently and we spoke about Spin Me Round. She had a lot of nice things to say about the film. Do you enjoy working with Aubrey?

Alison: With Aubrey, yes. We were in Jeff’s other film The Little Hours together, where we played beautiful nuns. That was really fun because my husband, Dave Franco, was in that movie with us as well. That was like a whole family was there. Aubrey and I actually just worked together, I guess we shot in 2018, but it came out last year, in Happiest Season, the lesbian holiday rom-com starring Kristen Stewart. We didn’t really have a lot of scenes together in that movie, but we both were in Pittsburgh for a little while. We all live in the same neighborhood. It’s very cute.

Dimitri: You’re also the producer on the Spin Me Round, Do you love wearing different hats when it comes to producing and acting?

Alison: I think my desire to produce probably came out of a desire to have a little more control as an actor. Especially just on these projects that I’ve written, I think that because I feel some ownership over the story itself and I’m playing a leading character, I like to also be a producer just so that I can oversee all the different things that go into what’s going on. On set, I think I’m probably a little bit more laid back. I guess, no, that’s not true. I’m probably always wearing my producer hat when I’m on set, but it’s more to make sure that everybody’s doing well and feeling good and that things are running smoothly. I guess it’s less micromanaging and more customer service.

Dimitri: You were shooting in Italy, so between, let’s say, twelve o’clock until 3 pm, you can’t get anything done. It’s lunchtime. Everyone goes on a break and little siesta. There’s no way you’re going to get anything done during these hours.

Alison: It’s definitely a different pace, shooting things in Italy than shooting them in America. In a lot of ways, I think it’s nice. It’s a good reminder to slow down and eat lunch and things like that, which we forget sometimes here when we’re making movies.

It’s tricky working on an Indie movie, because the nature of an Indie movie is, so many things are coming together at the last second. You’re like, “Can we print out this sign?” They’re like, “The printing shop is closed until 3:00, but–” It just takes a little more planning.

Dimitri: “Just have a glass of Prosecco. Everything’s going to be fine.” There’s always an answer for everything. Just have a glass of wine and relax, that’s Italian way.

Alison: We had a wonderful Italian crew. All the people that we worked with in Italy were really wonderful. The locations couldn’t be more beautiful, and it’s a real delight as a producer when you’re location scouting. Even the locations we didn’t use, I still got to drive around to beautiful places. We spent a couple of nights in Modena, which I love, eating great food and looking at that city, but we ended up not shooting our overnight stuff there. It was all good.

Dimitri: I guess you are looking for new projects to shoot in Italy. There’s always ways to find an excuse to work there.

Alison: Sure. I get so laser-focused on Italy. Even our vacations, we travel there a lot, and then another summer runs around and you’re like, “We should go to Europe somewhere. We should go somewhere we’ve never been.” We always end up back in Italy. Since shooting this project, I actually wrote and produced, and starred in another film that I co-wrote with my husband, Dave.
It’s called Somebody I Used to Know, and we shot it at the end of last year, up in Portland, Oregon. We made it for Amazon. We’re just completing post-production on it now, and waiting to hear what the release date might be on that. It stars myself and Jay Ellis, Kiersey Clemons, and Danny Pudi, a bunch of great people.
It’s a romantic film. It centers around a woman who has a run-in with her ex-boyfriend and it sends her on a journey.

Dimitri: Also, you have another project called Roar, the TV series. It’s rather fascinating stories. It was actually really exciting to watch something different. How did you get attached to this project?

Alison: Thank you. Roar was created by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch who created GLOW, which is the Netflix show that I worked on for almost four seasons. We got the COVID bug ourselves. Basically, they were developing this show for Apple Plus with Nicole Kidman, and I got a phone call from them one day saying, “We wrote an episode that we’d like for you to star in. We wrote this episode for you and it’s based on this book.” They sent me the script, and it was so weird. First of all, I love Liz and Carly. I would do anything with them. Them calling and just saying, “Hey, we have this other thing. Maybe you’d come to do an episode,” I was like, “Yes. Oh, also, what is it?” They’re so collaborative and so great. They sent me the episode. It was so strange and just tonally, unlike anything I had read before. I thought the concept of the show was really cool, which was stories about women written by women and based on this book that’s essentially feminist fables. Again, it takes ordinary women and puts them in extraordinary fantastical situations. Every episode also acts as a commentary on the female experience in society. I love content like that because I think it’s like the Mary Poppins way of, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Hopefully, the episodes, I found them to be really fun and entertaining to watch. At the same time, they all carried a powerful message.

Dimitri: What is your favorite fashion period in history?

Alison: It’s so tough. I probably circled through ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s on a loop, especially shooting GLOW. The whole time that we were shooting GLOW, which was set in the ’80s, I could tell that it was influencing my wardrobe at home. The kinds of jeans I was buying and the jackets. I would say even when I was in high school, which was late ’90s and early 2000s, my friends and I really had a fascination with ’80s clothes. We were always thrift shopping and we would, as a joke, buy outrageous ’80s dresses and wear them to the school dances. Maybe because I was born in the ’80s, I’ve always had some kinship with the ’80s. I also have to say, I’m loving this moment right now, as the ’90s are coming back into fashion in a big way, because I was a pre-teen and then teenager in the ’90s. The fit of the jeans is very nostalgic for me and things like that. It’s funny to see the Gen Z spin on ’90s era stuff.

Dimitri: You just finished production on a film with John Cena, Freelance, an action movie that you shot in Columbia.

Alison: It’s an action comedy. It was so fun. I’ve always wanted to do an action movie. GLOW felt pretty close because we did all of our own wrestling moves and stuff like that. We were really in top-tier shape. This was really fun. It was my first experience really shooting these big set pieces where explosions are happening and gunshots and bad guys chasing you, and all this stuff. It was just a blast. I loved working with John Cena. He’s so kind, he’s so professional and I felt really safe around him.

Dimitri: You can just hide behind him.

Alison: Exactly. [laughs] He’s a very responsible person, so I always knew, “John says it’s okay to run down this ravine. I can make it.” It was very fun. It was also an amazing experience to shoot in the jungles of Columbia. We shot the first half in Bogota, but we shot the second half near Girardot, which is– Then we would drive an hour to these very remote locations. I just saw the most beautiful landscapes and all that stuff. Things that I would never see, I don’t think, if we weren’t– These aren’t tourist attractions.
We were truly just out in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of rivers and things like that. Just even the flora and fauna were all very interesting. I remember calling my husband one day to tell him about a day of shooting. I said, “We’re running through this tall grass, and the grass if you hit it the wrong way, it can cut you.” He was like, “How tall?” I said, “I have cuts all over me, all over my body.” He was like, “How tall is this tall grass?” I was like, “It’s above my head. I’ve never seen grass this tall. It’s crazy.”
It was a really cool experience for me, being born and raised in Los Angeles. I’ve never really been to such remote places and it was just– Culturally, a lot of different stuff to see. It was really cool.

Dimitri: How are you planning to release Spin Me Round? Is it going to be a platform or are you doing a theatrical release for the film?

Alison: We sold the film to IFC, so they want to do a theatrical release. We will have a theatrical release in the summer. I think they also have a deal with AMC+, so it’ll be up on there right away. I think to rent also on VOD. It’s very exciting.

Dimitri: Are you excited for theatrical releases again?

Alison: It’s cool. I just have started going back to the theaters to see movies for the first time since COVID in the last few weeks. I have to say, it’s one of my favorite things. I think we all got so used to– I love watching stuff at home and, obviously, the comfort of that is really great. I love streaming. Streaming is wonderful, but I had forgotten because we all got so comfortable watching things at home, the feeling of the experience of seeing a movie in a theater, and how fun it is. Just the whole thing, getting popcorn and seeing a movie with other people, feeling the energy of other people’s laughter or gasps of shock. It’s been really fun to be back in the theater. I hope some people see this movie in the theater, if not just to have a fun thing to do, to be reminded of how cool that experience is.

Dimitri: It’s so true. I miss those squeaky chairs in Bruin theatre in Westwood, it’s still one of my favorite places. What’s your take on the platforms? Are you a binger?

Alison: I’m a binger. I watch everything. Oh yes. I had COVID a month ago and while I was quarantined at home or in a bedroom because I didn’t want to get my husband sick, so I was just quarantining in one room and he didn’t get it. It actually proves that social distancing works. He didn’t get it. My point was more, now that we’re allowed to be out and about in the world, I’m still trapped at home for five days. I watched every episode of The Flight Attendant Season 2 in two days. There are some shows, but then what I will say is, I think it’s cool, I like that there are a lot of different ways to do it now. When I started working in television on Mad Men and Community, you’d get shows weekly on TV. There wasn’t necessarily somewhere to watch them afterwards, if you missed them, but you could record them on your DVR. It was such a different style of thing and it was the only thing. I think it’s really exciting now that you could just– It’s the dealer’s choice. We’ve been watching Severance or we watched all of it on Apple Plus. Even though it’s a streaming show, they made the decision to release them weekly. At first, I thought it was going to drive me crazy, but it was a nice reminder of how that feels good. Also, there is an excitement to the desire to watch something. When it’s withheld, you have to wait. The anticipation, the conversation that gets struck up while you’re waiting for the next episode, the speculation about what’s going to happen. It reminded me how exciting that can be, as I said, and then I’ll turn around and watch all of Season 2 of Flight Attendant in two days. That’s just as fun for me. I like to literally just roll through the story.

Dimitri: How’s your photoshoot with Mike Ruiz?

Alison: Oh my God, it was so fun. It was like a ’70s fever dream. A lot of voluminous skirts and sequins and things like that. It was really fun. I feel like for shoots like that, I get to become a character, and that was certainly one of those where I was like a disco queen. We had disco music playing and it was just a great vibe. Mike is a great photographer. So quick. He really knows what he wants and he knows when he’s got it, which I appreciate.

Dimitri: If you could give your younger self advice, what it would be?

Alison: I think I had a confidence about performance and about my work, but I think I was very self-conscious about my body. I’ve spent a lot of years in my early 20s as an actress and even as a teenager, feeling really at odds with my body and hating my body. I think the advice that I would want to give is more just like, you’re beautiful. You should accept yourself. You’re beautiful in every way. Be true to yourself. Don’t try to be what anyone else wants you to be. Which is more of a universal piece of advice anyway, not just about appearance. I guess that’s the thing. That’s the piece of advice. In every way, I guess, be true to yourself. Don’t try to be who everybody wants you to be.