‘We're in a healthy relationship!' Alison Brie and Dave Franco on gruesome body horror Together

The Guardian

a day ago

Dave Franco is showing me his wounds: a bloody finger, a grazed foot, a palm full of blisters. On his phone, the actor zooms in on the photo collage he has compiled of the worst injuries he sustained on the set of Together, the romance-horror he stars in alongside his wife, Alison Brie. She is not to be outdone. In one scene, Brie's character is propelled against a glass door by a mysterious force. During filming, it seemed as if her stunt double was walking up to the door 'very slowly. I felt like it was not landing the beat,' says the actor. 'I said: 'Let me just do it.' And that's what's in the movie, me running and slamming into the glass. Then, of course, I had a little bruise on my nose that we had to cover with makeup.'
Franco and Brie were clearly willing to throw themselves – literally – into the hugely entertaining film, which follows Tim and Millie, an unhappy couple who move to the countryside and begin experiencing a bizarre and nauseating fusion of their bodies. The pair also co-produced the film – the feature debut from the Australian writer-director Michael Shanks – and were instrumental in getting it made, which is why they are also pouring every ounce of energy into spreading the word.
After its Sundance premiere generated significant hype and a reported $17m (£13.7m) distribution deal, Brie and Franco hit the US promotional trail hard: posing in a two-headed hoodie, answering questions while entertaining a swarm of rats (rodents feature heavily in the film) and turning their relationship into a comedy double act. At Together's London screening, they introduced the film with an anecdote about staring into each other's eyes while going to the toilet on set (they were conjoined by prosthetics for hours at a time during filming).
It's now lunchtime the day after – the pair have flown in from Los Angeles for 48 hours – and Brie and Franco have been doing radio interviews all morning. Are they tired of talking? 'We don't mind!' says Franco. It's the most press they have done for any project, they admit, but 'no one's forcing us to do this. It's a low-budget independent film coming out in the middle of summer against these giant tentpoles and we just want to create awareness.' Brie, who looks exceptionally glam in a black mini dress and matching black mini handbag, is an enthusiastic salesperson; Franco, sitting beside her in a knitted polo and high-waisted trousers, says he is much more shy. 'But I think she brings me out of my shell in a good way.' That said, Franco seems slightly on edge – at one point, he fiddles so much with a bottle-top that it flies across the table and hits me. 'Honey, please don't fling things at the journalist!' jokes Brie, as Franco apologises profusely.
Together doubles as a Rorschach test: the prospect of physically and psychologically merging with your romantic partner has divided viewers, say the pair. At the beginning, Tim and Millie's dynamic is civil but problematic; Millie is motherly and Tim avoids sex at all costs. But after he drinks from an underground pool, Tim becomes magnetically drawn to Millie – and whenever they touch, separating becomes extremely difficult.
In one eye-popping scene, a quickie in a bathroom cubicle threatens to become a more permanent entanglement; later, a rusty saw is the only thing preventing them from transforming into a single entity. 'We have talked to single people who say this is a very strong argument for staying single, and then we talked to a couple who were in a fight all week and the film actually helped them make up,' says Franco.
Some people find the ending 'optimistic and romantic'. 'Others find it horrifying,' says Brie. How do its stars feel? 'We find it optimistic. We're in a pretty healthy relationship. Pretty healthy?!' They start laughing at this assessment of their marriage. 'Heal-thy,' repeats Brie, in a comically overbearing fashion, as if she is attempting to convince her husband.
From the start, Brie and Franco were aware their relationship would be Together's selling point. 'We knew that the meta quality would enhance the movie,' says Brie, who is best known for playing the goody-two-shoes student Annie Edison in the sitcom Community and the wrestler Ruth 'Zoya the Destroya' Wilder in the comedy drama Glow. But they did worry about whether or not their real-life chemistry would translate to the screen. 'I think it would affect us if people were like: why are they even together?' says Franco, who followed his big break in 21 Jump Street with starring roles in the frat pack comedy Neighbors and the magician-thriller franchise Now You See Me.
Brie says performing their marriage for the public has been an 'interesting sensation, because in some ways you feel like you're giving so much of yourselves away'. It helps that the pair 'genuinely love each other' and have been together for 13 years. 'I think doing something like this if we had only been together a couple of years would have freaked me out,' says Brie. 'We're pretty private.'
Still, they are digging deep. Brie, who rests her hand on Franco's knee for much of the interview, describes Together as 'dealing with monogamy and co-dependency and then extrapolating it to its most outrageous conclusion'. Rather than becoming sick of the sight of each other, Brie realised after the shoot that the pair 'had become more co-dependent, because we were immediately separated' – for work reasons – 'and I didn't like it'.
Technically, a co-dependent relationship involves one party sacrificing their wellbeing for the benefit of the other, but I think Brie and Franco just really like spending time together. What does being co-dependent mean to them? 'I think it's more just being in the same space. What I miss the most is falling asleep next to you,' says Franco, as Brie joins in, chorus-like, with the end of his sentence.
Despite the interplay between Brie, Franco and their characters, Together was actually written about another couple: Shanks and his long-term partner. Tim, who sports the same hipster mullet as the director, was originally a 'dark shadow version' of Shanks, says Franco. The film was a brutally self-deprecating portrait of a struggling artist (Tim is a musician) whose partner does a more socially responsible job (Millie is a teacher). 'But he took that a little too far, to a point where my character was just an asshole – you couldn't root for him in any way.' The pair made Tim more sympathetic. They also Americanised the dialogue: 'The boot becomes the trunk,' says Brie. 'We took out all the 'I reckons'.'
Franco describes Shanks as 'the most confident first-time director ever'. Yet he and Brie were still determined to protect him from the 'bullshit logistics' of making a low-budget, tight-turnaround indie film. The couple were able to funnel the stress of being producers into playing the two increasingly disturbed protagonists. Shortly before shooting a scene in which Tim has a breakdown, they received the news that they were in danger of losing a filming location. Then Shanks informed Franco that they had time for only one take, which prompted a panic attack. 'I said: roll the cameras quickly, I want to use this for the scene!'
The inadvertent method acting worked: Together is a sweaty nightmare of a film. But it's cartoonish as well as creepy, littered with jokes, callbacks and ludicrous imagery. Brie and Franco are most famous for their comedic chops – something she doesn't think is fair. 'My first job was on Mad Men, which I would consider a dramatic television show.' She played Pete Campbell's wife, Trudy, in all seven seasons. 'Before that, I studied theatre and was doing a lot more dramatic work – I didn't do improv or standup or any traditional comedy things.' Didn't she work as a clown, though? 'Yes, but I was like 17 years old, doing that with my theatre friends from high school. So that was more like a summer job.'
I point out that I was going to say comedic acting often seems trickier than dramatic acting. 'Definitely,' nods Brie, laughing at her volte face. 'I'm like: we're not known for comedy – actually we are and it's much harder!' Franco is keen to attribute his success in this field to 'the funniest people in the world' who took him under their wing, particularly the Neighbors star Seth Rogen, who recently cast Franco as a hilariously stupid and hedonistic version of himself in the Apple TV+ Hollywood satire The Studio – a performance that bagged him an Emmy nomination. A sequence in which he goes from drug-addled mania, to saving the film studio, to complete collapse was an acting challenge that ordinarily would have intimidated him. 'But Seth and his team had so much faith in me.' Franco's voice begins to crack; his eyes redden. Brie puts her hand back on his knee. 'It makes me emotional even talking about it,' he continues. 'I just feel proud to be a small part of their ecosystem.'
For actors, horror and comedy have a lot in common, says Brie. 'In comedy, there's no room for vanity. It's the same in horror, where it's all about playing the stakes: it's not glamorous, you're gonna look fucked up.' One major difference between the genres, however, is their financial viability. It is harder than ever to get a small indie film made – for a comedy, close to impossible – while horror 'is the last remaining genre that draws people to the theatre outside of large tentpole movies', says Brie; amid all the IP-heavy content dominating cinemas, horror 'is where film-makers are getting to take the biggest risks and where the most unique stories are being told'.
Brie's next project is directing a 'female-forward' horror movie. Franco's directorial debut, 2020's The Rental – which starred Brie – was also a horror. As a big fan of the genre, 'it felt like the natural first step in going behind the camera', he says. 'We want to keep going down this path and continue to make horror films for ever.'
At this point, Franco seriously begins to flag. Brie alternates between finishing his sentences and cheering him on for completing a thought ('Yeah, you landed the plane!'). 'Sorry, I'm so tired,' laughs Franco. They have one last stretch of press to do, they say, at which point the happy couple can have a well-earned break from sharing their love – and rollicking brand of body horror – with the world.
Together is in UK and Irish cinemas from 15 August.