'Friendship' star Kate Mara talks awkward mother-son kiss on the lips in film, which was her idea

Yahoo

17-05-2025

While Kate Mara is best known for her work in dramas like The Martian and House of Cards, she's particular joy to watch in the comedy Friendship, which made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), starring alongside Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd. Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, Mara proves that she's equally as skilled with witty, awkward humour.
Mara plays Tami, wife of Robinson's character Craig. As the movie begins we see the couple at a support group for cancer survivors. Tami, a florist, is currently in remission.
When Tami sends Craig out to a neighbour's home to deliver a package that was accidently left at their house, Criag meets Austin (Rudd), a local weatherman. They start spending time together, drinking beers one night and foraging for mushrooms another day, and it's an exciting development for Craig, who was lacking friendship.
But when Austin invites Craig over for a night with his other friends, he ends up embarrassing himself to the point where it shifts his friendship with Austin.
While initially Tami seems like the more serious one next to Craig's oddity, we quickly see Mara's comedy shine, especially when it comes to Tami's relationship with her son Steven, played by Jack Dylan Grazer.
An early awkward laugh is when Tami and her teenage son kiss on the mouth, which was actually Mara's idea. Craig's response is, "You guys kiss on the mouth?" Showing that he's even an outcast in his own home.
"It's one of those things where you go, 'Oh, is that OK? He's old, right?'" Mara told Yahoo Canada. "I just thought it was so funny because Tami and her husband never kiss in the movie, there's no affection. We don't even hold hands."
"So I just thought that the contrast between them and their lack of physicality, and then her son being so touchy feely with her, was just hysterical."
Mara added that Jack was "hysterical" to work with.
"He's maybe the most energetic human I've ever met and he's so smart. He's really quick," she said.
"We just thought ... their characters needed to be incredibly close and bonded to a point of where you do kind of go, 'Wait. Why is that so connected and then the other two are not at all.' That was really fun."
With the script really attracting Mara to the film, she praised DeYoung's approach to comedy.
"From the second I met him, what a lovely human and the best energy, and he's so smart," Mara said. "I just thought his script was so great, but ... he wanted to approach it like he was making a drama, like he was making The Master, which is so funny and unexpected, and so specific."
"You never want to play for laughs, ... but if you're making a comedy, obviously that's what you're hoping for. So if you take that away from it and you just do the scene in a real way, that's how we approached it, and it was just such a great environment."
DeYoung has said that he strives to treat his audience like "intelligent" viewers.
"I just feel like there are a lot of safe choices that don't respect the audience," DeYoung told IndieWire. "It's so nice to feel respected by a filmmaker, even if I don't like the movie or agree with what it's trying to do. If it feels like it's trying to do something and treat us as the intelligent people that I like to imagine we are, I'll respect it. A lot of films really sell out the audience and treat us dumber than we are."
Mara has a similar sentiment to DeYoung, highlighting that it's particularly common for films to "spell everything out" for its audience.
"It's just so common now, just to really overwrite, talk too much and really, yes, spell everything out," Mara said. "And not just in TV, but in film, really spell everything out for the audience."
"It's so much more interesting when you just let people come up with the things on their own and trust that the people watching are going to understand what you're not saying. I do think the way he handled that was so smart, and it obviously works."