And this reunited you with Larry. It seems to me that believing in that relationship is essential to the success of the film. You have to believe history, back story. How much did you work on that with Larry, and does it make it easier because you two know each other so well?
It was very important to cast somebody in the role of Jakob that was somebody that I had a good rapport with and had a good rapport with me. There was a lot of names that we talked about over the two-year period, but, from the very beginning, we had Larry in mind and we kept coming back to Larry. It just made the most sense.
Our stories are similar. We’ve both in the business for a very long time. We’re both long married. We’ve both played a lot of second banana parts. It’s nice to also give Larry a part where he can shine. He has the capability and he’s not often given that role of being a leading man. He’s a leading man in this. On so many levels, it made sense to us, and so we always kept coming back to Larry. Finally, when we had to really make our final decision, we had talked about other people, but it had to be Larry!
We’ve known each other for years now. I’ve done a few of his radio shows—”Tales from Beyond the Pale.” I’ve done a few of those projects with him. We’ve kept in touch. When we finally said, “Larry, this is really happening. We really have the money. Travis is directing. We have a location. We have a start date. It’s yours!” He was excited and I was excited.
We did come up with some back stories for our characters. In some ways, they aligned, and in some ways they didn’t, but that’s kind of like life, isn’t it? I see my life differently than my husband sees my life. So we shared stories with one another. We wrote like a minibiography. We shared them with each other. And we went, “I see it a little differently than you. OK.” We talked through it further with Travis, who was instrumental in trying to develop some sort of glue that would hinge the stories together.
You can view the original article HERE.
