Warning: This article contains spoilers aboutWhat Happens Later.
Meg Ryanis exactly who you expect her to be.
There’s plenty of that inWhat Happens Later,particularly in her own character’s storyline.
Meg Ryan in ‘What Happens Later’.Bleecker Street
Ryan herself is the parent of an adoptee, Daisy, 19.
“This idea that there’s a benevolent, larger force at work.
It’s a magical idea, but I want to have faith in it.
Meg Ryan and David Duchovny in ‘What Happens Later’.Bleecker Street
I like that it’s an element of our movie, and I feel that with my daughter.
I feel like it’s magical forces that put us together.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: This is based on a play,Shooting Star.
David Duchovny and Meg Ryan in ‘What Happens Later’.Bleecker Street
How did that come your way and what made you want to turn it into a movie?
MEG RYAN:It came to me during the pandemic, during lockdown, basically.
They had done a first draft of a screenplay of the play.
Over the course of 18 months, it kept evolving.
I worked on it a lot.
And then David came on board, and we kept talking.
Some of that found its way into the script, too.
It was a long evolution.
It has been a minute since your last directorial effort.
Did you intend to take that long of a break?
And then why was this the one to come back with?
And then I wanted to try it again, and it took a while to find the right project.
I wasn’t that aware of what tools were at my disposal the first time.
And this time I was more aware.
You two had never made a movie together.
She got in touch about this script and we met for lunch and started talking about it.
I loved the way she talked about the film and what it was going to be about.
It ended up being invaluable when we got on set to have had this history of working through it.
We had a natural rhythm over Zoom, but it’s weird.
It should be over here."
The first scene we did was where we met in the movie.
Did you feel like you really shaped and changed the script over the course of those Zooms?
RYAN:All kinds of things evolved.
When we were first working on it, it felt like even a different ending.
It really did shift a lot.
I really thought ofWho’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?.
It’s a portrait of a relationship that makes sense mostly to them.
It didn’t make sense.
RYAN:He had an ulcer, not anxiety.
DUCHOVNY:I had the old maladies, high cholesterol.
But my initial instinct is to be, “Well, that doesn’t work.
Let’s try something else.”
RYAN: It really should work that way, but it doesn’t.
We were able to keep it alive, even into the edit process.
We found, “Where are these two the most alive together?”
DUCHOVNY:Thank goodness Meg was just alive to that happening on the set.
And Meg was so confident of our rhythm.
You could see it in the movie.
There’s not a lot of laughs that are made from a cut.
RYAN:There are a lot of two shots, and we didn’t do that many takes.
We did three or four of long scenes.
DUCHOVNY:And we were walking amidst actual travelers.
We couldn’t shut it down.
RYAN:you could’t actually ask somebody in an airport to slow down or speed up.
DUCHOVNY:you might’t ask them to do anything; they’re on their own journey.
And there’s somebody who says, “Oh, that’s Meg Ryan and David Duchovny.”
I just said, “That’s not helpful.”
RYAN:And then he went right back into the scene.
That was a really amazing thing about David too.
We also had to contend with the real loudspeaker of the real Arkansas airport.
I didn’t get to see any footage really.
We didn’t really have playback or anything like that.
So I watched a lot of your ability to cope in the edit room.
Meg, I feel like directing yourself is such a challenge.
Was it easier the second time around?
RYAN:I don’t feel like either of us got directed.
I pretended the entire time that there was someone, a real director, outside in a tent.
DUCHOVNY:I’m glad you didn’t tell me.
RYAN:We set up all the shots; we prepped as much as we could.
It was a shock to see the blonde person in the movie with David in the edit room.
DUCHOVNY:I’ll say that’s not true.
Meg is the director and she’s very prepared and she knows what she’s doing.
Director is such a weird word, a very aggressive word.
Did you fall naturally back into that?
DUCHOVNY:I didn’t think of that at all.
But it’s a reversal.
RYAN:Were you the skeptic?
DUCHOVNY:No, I was the believer.
Thanks for being a fan.
No, I’m having trouble remembering myself.
It’s always an individual thing with the actors.
Working with Meg in this realistic comedic vein was such a pleasure for me.
And I don’t walk around trying to compare to anything else I’ve done.
He’s trying to get away from her the entire time.
There’s so many improvs that he does.
How did both of you make sense of that in terms of acting choices?
DUCHOVNY:That was a wild card while we were shooting.
It had to do with [Hal Liggett’s vocal] performance.
The weather is a magical element.
The snow is a magical element.
The score is a magical element.
This movie is about the one that got away, for better or worse.
RYAN:Not that we’re going to talk about.
Before you needed the voice of the airport to get you together.
Now you’ve got the option to do it on your own.
RYAN:Nowadays, you could find anybody [on the internet].
DUCHOVNY:You don’t need the airport.
What Happens Lateris in theaters now.
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