24-05-2025
Dave Franco on Smoking With Bryan Cranston in ‘The Studio' Finale and Bringing ‘Toxic Positivity' to Every Scene
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of 'The Studio,' now streaming on Apple TV+.
Months after filming his final scenes in 'The Studio,' guest star Dave Franco got a call from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg for a last minute idea that wound up featuring a 'Now You See Me' tie-in.
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'They said: 'We have this idea where you give a recap of Episode 9 and you're totally fucked up, and we have to film this tomorrow. Are you in town? We're about to lock this cut,'' Franco recalls. 'I think it was just a genius idea rather than a dry, typical recap. There's something really fun about hearing what happened from the perspective of the most fucked-up person at the party.'
The finale kicks off right where Episode 9 left off as the Continental Studio executives, as well as Patty Leigh (Catherine O'Hara), are left to clean up Matt's (Rogen) mess and get CinemaCon presenters Franco and Zoë Kravitz camera ready. But as the executives soon realize, Franco and Kravitz show no signs of slowing down.
Franco came into the mix as the ensemble neared the end of a long shoot, along with two weeks on location in Las Vegas. 'Everyone was a little exhausted, a little loopy, and so we were leaning into that energy,' he tells Variety. 'I obviously wasn't there as long as everyone else, I just popped in for a handful of days, so I could come in with slightly fresh energy and try to infuse that into the scenes.'
'The Studio' is the latest Franco collaboration with Rogen and Goldberg — they go back all the way to 'Superbad' in 2007. 'They want it to be a group effort and their main rule is best idea wins, no matter who it's coming from. And I've adopted that mentality when directing my own movies,' Franco says.
Below, Franco breaks down smoking with Bryan Cranston, filming that chaotic CinemaCon sequence with a live audience and how the 'Together' cast and crew 'killed ourselves every step of the way' to make that film a reality.
It was a discovery process. Before my first scene in those final episodes, I was talking to Seth and Evan about how how fucked up I should be. We quickly realized that there's no limit, really. The crazier I am, the better. But the best thing to focus on is bringing this extreme positivity and optimism to every scene, which would juxtapose where everyone else in the episode is mentally. They are all completely stressed out and whenever you insert me a scene with this toxic positivity, it infuriates all of that.
She's doing something that people haven't necessarily seen from her before, where she's just completely unhinged and having the time of her life and being as silly as possible. In that specific moment, she is terrified because she has taken way too many mushrooms, but my reaction is that I am so excited that someone is going to maybe be on the level where I'm at. Finding out that she is about to go flying makes me so happy because I'm going to have another partner-in-crime that night.
For him to tap into his 'Malcolm in the Middle' roots where he is fully embracing his silliness and, like me, being as fucked up as he possibly can — it's always fun watching one of the greats be that unhinged.
My wife and I's idea of a wild night is being in bed at 8 p.m. and watching a documentary with our two cats!
In-between takes, I was trying to conserve my energy. Nicholas Stoller was there — I've known him a long time and adore him, and I remember him trying to riff with me between takes. And then after a few takes, he realized: 'Oh shit, Dave's exhausted. I'm going to let him be.' But it's just trying to find those moments to recharge during takes.
That was all real. It was a real auditorium in Vegas and we had an audience. When you're doing that, it makes it so much easier because you feel their energy, you're performing to a real crowd. I think the challenge of that scene was going from being extremely delirious on multiple drugs and then turning on a dime and becoming my character from the Ron Howard movie, changing my accent and adopting this confidence in front of hundreds of audience members.
When they were first applying the bloody makeup, we all decided that the more beat-up I looked, the funnier it would ultimately be because I still come in with this toxic positivity even though I just got my ass beat. That was fun to continue that level of optimism even when I'm moments away from going to the hospital.
It's a difficult question to answer. Gosh, I mean, obviously Seth's character is dealing with wanting to create art that will last forever, that has integrity, but he's in a position where his studio also needs to make money and needs to think about the commerce of it all. So that's the struggle that he's dealing with and, when thinking about my personal approach to this job: I don't overthink it. I want to create projects that do feel unique, that feel like something we've never seen before and I know it's a little more difficult to get projects like that off the ground. Sometimes you have to make them on a very low budget and you're killing yourself to help them see the light of day, but that's the stuff that I really love. I've been fortunate to continue making things that I feel like are pushing boundaries.
That's a very specific example of something where we killed ourselves every step of the way. Now that it's picking up a bit of traction, it's so gratifying to see that it is resonating. All the work was hopefully worth it.
If anything, those final episodes are potentially reminding people that so many of us are doing this because we love movies. For me, my first job was at a mom-and-pop store when I was 14 years old, and it was actually illegal for me to be working there at that age, so they paid me by allowing me to take home as many movies as I wanted. That was my film school, that's how I started seeing all the classics and it's the reason why I'm doing any of this.
I didn't start acting until I was maybe 18 or 19, and it wasn't even necessarily something that I loved at first, but I figured this was a potential way into the industry and to be a part of it all. I feel so fortunate that I'm able to dip into all different sides of it now with directing, writing and producing.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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