In the romantic comedy “How Do You Know,” the people in the story often struggle with questions over true love and loyalty. Lisa Jorgenson (played by Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon) is a Washington, D.C.-based professional softball player who, at age 31, finds herself out of a job when she is cut from her team. Lisa is dating a major-league baseball player named Matty (played by Owen Wilson) and they quickly move in together, but their relationship is often uneasy because of Matty’s self-absorbed ways and because Lisa starts to have doubts about settling down with him.
Before things got serious with Matty, Lisa went on a blind date with a nice-guy businessman named George Madison (played by Paul Rudd) on the same day she learns that she lost her job and the same day that George has been served with court papers for a federal case involving shady financial dealings by his father, Charles Madison (played by Oscar winner Jack Nicholson). After their disastrous first date, Lisa and George go their separate ways, but later they find out they have an attraction to each other. Complicating matters, Lisa has gone back to dating Matty, and George must decide whether to reveal his true feelings to Lisa so that he can possibly start a relationship with her. Meanwhile, George’s loyal assistant, Annie (played by Kathryn Hahn), struggles with being under orders from the authorities to keep confidential information from George as he is indicted on charges of stock fraud.
At a New York City press conference for “How Do You Know,” Witherspoon, Rudd, Wilson, Nicholson, Hahn and Oscar-winning writer/director/producer James L. Brooks sat down together to share their thoughts on the movie and how it related to their own real-life experiences. With so many funny people on the panel, they told plenty of jokes told during the press conference. Rudd had the whole room bursting with laughter when he told a hilarious story about one of the worst dates of his life — and he admitted that the bad date was his fault. Here is what this talented group of people said at the press conference.
How do you know when you’re in love? Are there any telltale signs?
Nicholson: It’s too long ago for me to remember!
Rudd: You always heard, “You just know.” But I question that. Is that really more of a way to get out of the question? Or do you just know?
Brooks: I had a line that I believed in so much, and then I took it out of the movie that Paul was going to say: “You’re more yourself than you ever thought possible.” And I find most people when they answer the question, it has something to do with what they become in the relationship, what happens to them, and how they see themselves.
Jack, how do you know when you want to do an acting role?
Nicholson: Well, he’s kind of close to me, but it’s a privilege to work with Jim [Brooks]. He’s probably the best screenwriter in the world. You just get great material, and he always casts wonderful actors. Look at us all. That, plus you rarely get to work with a dear friend and it goes well. A couple of Oscars [for “Terms of Endearment” and “As Good as It Gets”] didn’t hurt in cementing the relationship. That’s how you know you’re in love.
Jack, why do you still love the entertainment business after all these years?
Nicholson: Travel, beautiful women, excellent compatriots, drinking pals. It’s very exciting. It’s an exciting business. We’ve all been doing it a while. We all get nervous. We get wild. And that should be all I say, I think.
Jack and James, can you talk about the Charles Madison character and anyone who may have inspired the character?
Nicholson: Well, we started with Eugene Paulette, and that went out the window pretty quick. I had an interior model for the guy, but I never tell the secret of who I am like that. You work with Jim, and it’s pretty clear who the guy is in the material. It’s pretty succinct.
Brooks: I play “catch,” pretty much.
Mr. Brooks likes to write characters that are endearing in spite of their flaws. To the actors, is there one particular flaw in your “How Do You Know” characters that you embraced?
Wilson: With a lot of people, when you talk, they have that kind of built-in censor, and you’re gauging people’s reactions — “Gee, this might not come across right. I’m going to say something different” — and my character would say exactly what he was thinking. It was this honesty that would be funny and charming.
Rudd: The character that I was playing, one of the things that I loved about him was his whole world was kind of falling in on itself, and yet he tried to carry himself with this dignity. It was kind of who he was. He seemed to be unconcerned with how it might come off or how he might come off. If it was awkward or nervous or even the way that the character spoke, it seemed to me to be from another time. This character could have been in a movie from the ‘40s.
Wilson: He was a gentleman.
Rudd: Yeah. You don’t see that very much these days. I loved that.
Nicholson: That’s my boy!
Rudd: Thanks, Dad! [Rudd and Nicholson hug each other.]
Nicholson: [He says jokingly] We kissed a lot.
Witherspoon: [She says jokingly] They made out. [She says seriously] I think what’s interesting about my character is that I’ve done a lot of comedies where the woman talks a lot about her romantic dynamics and is always talking about men, which I do. And this character is a woman who has a hard time conveying her emotions and doesn’t even really want to talk about things, which is an interesting female character.
My character says to Owen [as Matty] at one point, “If I wake up crying in the middle of the night, just ignore me, please.” I don’t know what woman would ever say that in real life. So that was a fascinating character for me, because I usually play verbal characters. This woman is more interior.
Wilson: Yeah, I think that’s why I [as Matty] fell for you!
Hahn: I was pregnant at the time we were shooting this movie, so I would say it was a beautiful place to put all those hormones. My husband was grateful to have a little vacation from his hormonally crazed wife for a few weeks while we made this movie. I also really, really, really respected and loved that her moral compass was so firmly placed. I just loved what a bulldog she was with her need to protect her man, her boss. I think it was really, really sweet and special how those lines, he’s such goodness — Paul Rudd and the character — so it was amazing to see those lines between employee and boss shift. This man needs a mommy, and so she was happy to fill that role for a time before her baby came.
Reese, your Lisa character has all these Post-Its on which she’s written inspirational mottos and messages. Do you do that in real life? And what inspires you?
Witherspoon: You’d be surprised. I’m definitely somebody who has Post-Its everywhere, like “The Six Evils of the World.” I really do. “Desire, greed, envy …” I try to tell myself those are the things to avoid. Positive affirmations, I have to say “Judge not lest ye be judged” is a pretty good one. That has guided me through life.
Paul, your George Madison character likes to sing when he’s drunk. Are you like that in real life?
Rudd: [He says jokingly] I’ll sing Teddy Pendergrass drunk, sober. It makes no difference to me at all. That was all sense memory. I got drunk once in college. I tried to remember what that feeling was like. It was tough.
Paul, what kind of music do you like in real life?
Rudd: I love XTC. It’s a shame they don’t perform anymore. They might not even be a band anymore. Teddy Pendergrass, that song, I’ve sung several times at karaoke. I listen to all kinds of music. I knew all the words to that song. And it’s also an eight-minute song, so it’s probably good that we didn’t get into the entire thing.
Lisa kind of goes through an identity crisis because she’s been so consumed with her career, she doesn’t really know what to do with herself after she loses her job. To any of the actors on the panel, did you ever have a backup plan on what you would do with you life if you couldn’t be an actor?
Wilson: Jim [Brooks] actually produced [my] first movie [1996’s “Bottle Rocket”], and we had a horrible test-screening process, and I remember actually thinking about joining the military. We had one horrible test screening. An executive came up afterward and said, “Congratulations. Seriously.” And Jim, quick as a whip, said, “Our goal for the next screening is to have someone say, ‘Congratulations,’ without having to say, “Seriously.’”
Reese, your Lisa character is reluctant about settling down and getting married. Could you relate to that at this point in your life? Or would you want to settle down and get married again?
Witherspoon: I think it’s really interesting to play a woman who can articulate that she isn’t ready to have a family, and isn’t even sure she wants to have a family. And I have a lot of friends like that. I think it’s a really interesting character that can actually say it. I think Jim wrote it so beautifully, that emotional honesty of someone who is not afraid to be honest about maybe not wanting what other women want. I think there’s a lot of women out there like that. It was interesting to play a character like that. Obviously, it’s not like myself. I have two kids [and] a very sort-of settled-down life. It was cool to play that girl.
How much of yourselves do you bring to roles like the ones you have in “How Do You Know”?
Wilson: I don’t know if it’s a conscious decision. It seems like you read the part and do the best job that you can. I don’t know if it’s deciding how much I’m going to bring of myself. I think you bring everything you can.
Rudd: And when it’s written so well, characters are much clearer. You get a much clearer sense of who the character is when it’s written so well. So in a way, it’s just easier to play.
How did you deal with any rivals you may have had in real life?
Wilson: I guess my older brother [Andrew Wilson] is kind of a rival. He’s actually in the movie a little bit. I threw out the first pitch at an Orioles game. They didn’t have me stand on the mound. They just kind of had me loft it in. And he saw me on ESPN, and he was like, “You didn’t exactly bring the heat with that pitch.” And I said, “Well, see what you do.” And they had him throw out a pitch at a Rangers game, and he threw it so hard that it was a perfect strike. And the announcer goes, “Is it too late to sign this guy up?”
What about any rivals in love?
Rudd: Rivals in love? A shame it wasn’t tennis!
Nicholson: I call the partners.
Wilson: Well, my older brother again, actually.
Rudd: I think the answer would be the same for me: Owen’s older brother.
James, when you were writing “How Do You Know,” did you start out with one idea of how the movie was going to be and end up with a completely different idea?
Brooks: I think the movies are supposed to be that you start with one idea, and when the actors come in, and it’s supposed to change course. Everybody’s contributing. It’s supposed to be, at that point, a group effort to work for the picture. And honest to God, in the last 36 hours, I’ve had so many thoughts about what this picture means that I wish I had thought of some time ago.
To any of the actors, did you learn anything about yourself from doing “How Do You Know”?
Hahn: It kind of goes back to a previous question. Jim’s movies are cast so carefully. He takes care. You can see that he loves what he writes so dearly. You can tell. I walked into this environment feeling a bubble of faith around me, that I was there for a reason. There was something within me that was important for this part.
And so I felt it was a freedom in just trusting that you were there, that already work had been done. Obviously, because I was pregnant, that was some work that helped in this particular instance! It was a big one. Yeah, I learned a lot. I learned a lot in that hospital scene — a ton, because it felt like a play with all of us.
Witherspoon: Yeah, I was going to say it felt like a play. I learned a lot about breaking a lot of habits that I had for a long time. And it’s a testament to the writing that you can play a scene 26 different ways. You can play it funny, you can play it sad — all different ways. It’s because the writing and the dialogue was so good.
One time, Paul and I did the scene where we were on the blind date. I don’t know if you remember this, Jim, but he’s like, “OK, you say Paul’s lines.” Not on camera, but just as a rehearsal. I did all of Paul’s parts, and he did all of my parts. It was so amazing. We knew each other’s lines!
Brooks: Why do I forget all of the cool things that I’ve done?
Nicholson: With Jim, you have to remember that he writes comedies like nobody else. You’re dealing with life, death, business crime, fatherhood, motherhood — all of these very serious topics. And everything’s funny at the same time. It has truth and it’s funny. What he attacks to begin with is where it’s really distinct. If you reviewed it: cancer, news, all these kinds of things. It’s the goal he sets himself. He sets very interesting goals.
Like I remember one I particularly liked. It was in “As Good as It Gets.” He says, “Number one, I want to write a part for the dog. But I also want to get a specific laugh based on language.” He just picks out very hard things to do, and it’s supposed to look easy, kind of like Fred Astaire. Where he starts is always amazing to me, actually.
Wilson: That was one of the missions he sent me on: the barbecue. He was like, “Man, this barbecue has got to be the greatest barbecue you’ve ever had! I don’t know if you’re going to have to drive through Texas and hit places until you can find it so you know what you’re thinking of in that scene, but you don’t want to leave that barbecue.” [He says to Brooks] I would check in from Texas: “I just had some incredible [barbecue].”
Nicholson: And the other side of it, this crying scene I had with Paul. I’m doing it like this, and all of a sudden, [Jim Brooks] comes running out from the back and he says, “I don’t think I want the grips laughing around the television set. Can you do the scene like this?” And I thought, “This is a comedy. I’ve never had a direction like that: ‘Don’t make anybody laugh!’” Then he forgot it. I told him this the other night. He forgot he did it! Somehow, it’s inspiring.
Jack, the Charles Madison is a unique character can be described as a “cuddly shark.” He loves his son but wouldn’t think twice of letting him go to jail for crimes that Charles committed. How did you reconcile the two sides of the Charles Madison character in your mind?
Nicholson: He’s a dad. He does honestly feel what he says. “It’s against the law to piss on the sidewalk, but this is spitting on the sidewalk. You go to Egypt, you bribe the Egyptian. That’s it.” I think he thinks he’s doing the right thing for the things he loves, including attempting to send his son to jail. That was a little tough for me. [Charles] thought that [George] could get out of it.
There was a speech in there where … [Charles] sort of tells what he was doing. “You hired a schmo lawyer. I could’ve used money to make it too expensive for them to prosecute. That’s just the way it’s done. You outspend the government.” So that’s kind of where I got the keys of reality for the guy. He really didn’t think he was doing that much wrong. I’m glad you found it unique. I was a little worried about that myself, since I feel like kind of a lovable shark.
Unemployment is a big worry for some of the main characters in “How Do You Know.” Jim, did you write the movie with the current economic recession in mind? Does unemployment hit home for you?
Brooks: Very much for me. I think that everything bad that is going on is an attack on our personhoods. That kind of shark that you talked about is representative of an American businessman. I think he’s typical. I’m somebody who’s enormous about specifics and detail. I get obsessed with them, and I couldn’t pick a business to put it out front. And I realized that it’s important that Jack’s character be representative of the whole breed.
And then I think so much has gone on and our trust has been eroded to such an extraordinary extent by the absence of decent role models any place in our lives, that the last holdout is people meeting each other and holding hands and taking it on together. I felt that very much when I wrote this.
Reese, you’re sort of the filling in the Rudd/Wilson sandwich. What was it like working with the Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson?
Brooks: or can you at least think about it a lot?
Rudd: I know I will!
Brooks: I think we have our advertising campaign!
Witherspoon: It’s a tough job, ladies, but someone’s got to do it. It was great. How lucky am I to work with two of the most talented, funny, attractive men? And it was also like every time I’d do a scene with Owen, I’d get really attached to Owen. The day Owen had to leave, I just started crying! Jim was like, “Stop crying! This is Owen’s scene!”
And then I’d go and do scenes with Paul, and I felt like I was cheating on Owen. It felt like a totally different movie, which was nice. It was like being in two different plays, and these two movies intersect at the end.
Reese, what was it like to train for the softball scenes?
Witherspoon: That was incredible. I got to work with these Olympian softball players. And to get in the mind of a female athlete, I’m really not that athletic. So when Jim said he wanted detail and specificity, he was like, “I really want you to work with coaches and train.” So I did that for four months, three hours a day. I’m still not any good at softball, but I learned a lot. It is a completely different culture of someone who grows up as a high-school athlete or a collegiate athlete.
Wilson: I just remember meeting that coach that you had. Such a formidable person!
Witherspoon: Yeah, Sue Enquist was this 11-time national champion coach. She spoke differently. She walks differently. She carries herself differently. She has a different emotional approach to life. And it’s sort of a parallel to being an actor, especially as a woman. I don’t really know how I;m supposed to say this. We have a time that is our time that we work, and we work a lot. And hopefully, you shift and you’re able to become the Meryl Streeps or the Diane Keatons or whatever and continue working, but to play a character who has a shelf life or an expiration date or knows that by the beginning of her 30s, her career is over, it was sort of an interesting culture to explore.
Nicholson: Peaking early.
Witherspoon: Yeah.
Lisa and George’s first date is a blind date that is very awkward. Can you indulge us with any stories of bad blind dates or bad first dates that you went on in real life?
Witherspoon: I had somebody correct my grammar on a blind date. I knew within the first 10 minutes that the date was over.
Do you remember what you said wrong?
Witherspoon: I don’t know. I’m from Tennessee. I probably say everything wrong. I probably said “aint.”
Does anyone else have any stories about bad dates?
Rudd: A friend of mine went on a double date with these two girls. It started off that we were trying to impress the girls and make each other laugh. And it started out innocently enough, with my friend kicking his shoe 30 feet in the air as we were walking down the street. It really struck me as funny.
So then I tried to outdo him. I jumped on a mailbox and he kept walking. And each thing kept escalating. The girls didn’t laugh at any of these things, but it ended with … we were driving home, and I had a jeep at the time, and we were driving back. And I thought it would be funny, in the middle of the conversation, to jump put of the jeep and run along the side, and keep the conversation going, as if it was normal.
But I didn’t take into account that when you’re going slow in a car, it’s still really fast. I was in the middle of the conversation and just stepped out of the car and fell so hard on the road that I ripped my jeans and cut up my hands. And I felt the tire whoosh past my head, and looked up, and in a split second, the car was already 50 feet in front of me and going into a tree. And they were shell-shocked, and I felt so stupid. And then I just drove home in silence. That was the only date I had with that girl.
Brooks: Suddenly, bad grammar seems pale, doesn’t it?
Wilson: It does seem pretty reckless.
Rudd: It was so stupid. I felt so dumb!
Wilson: It’s even criminal. It’s beyond stupid.
Rudd: Yeah. Don’t do it!
Paul, how old were you when that happened?
Rudd: Late 20s. Old enough to know better!
What advice were you given early in your careers that turned out to be really right or really wrong?
Witherspoon: I really wanted to be a Broadway kid, so I went to all these camps in the Catskills, and I had to sing and dance and act. And I remember getting through the singing coaching at the end, and in the evaluation, it said, “Whatever you do, don’t sing.”
I think I told that story when I won an award for “Walk the Line.” Thank God I didn’t listen! But it was hard to get over that mental block had told me basically, “You don’t know how to do that. Don’t do it.” You’ve got to be careful what you say to people.
Brooks: “Change your socks at 3 o’clock when you’re directing.” That was the best advice I’ve ever gotten.
If you could give yourselves advice when you were 17 years old, what would it be?
Witherspoon: I had a girlfriend who said something really smart to me the other day. She was telling me a story about how she used to always go to the same coffee shop because she was really into the guy making the coffee. He was this cool guy in a band. She always wanted to go out with him, but she never noticed that the guy giving her the coffee every day was totally in love with her. So she said, “Don’t follow the guy you’re chasing. Look at the guy who’s chasing you.” I think that takes time and life experience to notice. Boys have fun chasing, especially when you’re young.
Hahn: I wish when I was 17, somebody had told me not to care so much about what other people had thought. There’s such a freedom in not really worrying. My mom had said to me once, “What the person feels about you is none of your business!,” which I thought was such an awesome thing to remember. It’s so good.
Owen, how much research did you have to do to portray a baseball player?
Wilson: It was kind of like the barbecue. It wasn’t a really a task. I kind of took it upon myself, just because I kind of wanted to go to Arizona and watch spring training. I have a friend who works with the Texas Rangers, so I got to hang around with them for a few days.
Jack, is it true you’re involved in a movie called “Americana”?
Nicholson: I don’t even remember that, so I won’t even answer that.
Jack, “How Do You Know” is your first new movie in three years. Does it bother you that you have such a long period of time in between movies?
Nicholson: No, I’m kind of a guy who likes to prove things. All my life, I’ve said, “When I’m so sick of it and everything else,” everybody sad, “Oh God, you couldn’t not work.” Well, I’m kind of proving them wrong. I read a lot of script, so I feel like I did a lot of movies in the last three years. They’re all the same.
I like not working. I know that’s kind of hideous and blasphemous, but I really do. And I think I’ve started to infect others, young guys. I had a conversation with Leo [DiCaprio]. He says, “I love not working.” I said, “See what I mean?” I don’t want to infect him.
No, I don’t mind at all. I love not working. I’d rather be doing something like [“How Do You Know”]. I had a great time here. These are three of the most talented comic talents n the country. That’s not small. I’m always learning when it’s comedy. I learned plenty from these guys.
I wanted to tell you when we talked abut dates, I thought, “Well, I didn’t get to work with Owen [in “How Do You Know”].” The only contact I’d had with him, he called me up when I got there the first day, and he said, “Hey, do you want to go out and shoot machine guns?” I thought, “Oh my god! All these guys think I’m adventurous. I am not adventurous!” I thought, “What a date. That would be my date! Machine guns!”
Witherspoon: [She laughs.] He invited me too! It was kind of awesome.
Wilson: I’m like an NRA [National Rifle Association] spokesman.
Did you actually shoot machine guns?
Wilson: I actually did. A friend knew somebody at one of the embassies that had a tennis, and when they let us on to play tennis, they had a machine gun range underneath the embassy that they then took us to shoot on.
Nicholson: The man is charming!
Jim, there’s a scene in a movie where one of Matty’s fellow baseball players says something like, “You know you’re in love when you use condoms with other women.” Can you talk about writing that scene? And what’s your relationship with sports or athletes? What do you think about them?
Brooks: I’m a sports fan. It was originally the opening scene. And there was a character I wanted to have in one scene that represented [Lisa’s] dating life and be an example of the kinds of guys she was going out with. And then I really fell in love with the character. It was just such joy to write that guy, for me, that it changed the story. It altered everything, because I wasn’t thinking of it as a [love] triangle at all when I started. It was pure fun to write a guy who says the un-sayable almost constantly.
Mr. Brooks, as you’re writing, do your characters start to come alive and tell you what to do?
Brooks: Everything happens. They come alive, and sometimes it’s a false alarm. In this case, I was sort of coaching myself, at least in the beginning, to be as loose as I could be. And I think that did open doors for me, just really concentrating on that.
Why did you decide to set “How Do You Know” in Washington, D.C.?
Brooks: Let me give two answers. They’re both honest. One is that if you do a baseball player, and he’s on the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers, right away the movie is false to me; there’s something weird about that. If you’re on the Washington Nationals, it happens to be a real team, where it’s sort of a fictional thing as well.
Rudd: Don’t tell that to Ryan Zimmerman!
Brooks: But that’s truly my reason. Washington is a gorgeous city. It killed me that for financial reasons, we couldn’t do the whole movie there. It killed me is that what I find about Washington … is that coming home at night is so restorative, because it’s so damn beautiful — not that Philadelphia wasn’t great; they were great to us [and it was] a great city to be in, but I did want Washington for the whole shoot. And I’m so glad today because I spoke to a few people from Washington who felt we did manage to represent the city and part of its beauty. I can’t tell you how great I felt about that.
Reese and Jack, could you talk a little more about how you developed you characters in “How Do You Know”?
Nicholson: There are always different things that make parts difficult. The text was what I had to concentrate on here. There was a lot to say. That was really the emphasis and the pace of it. I’m kind f a slow talker, so I was more into that. Everybody always thinks they’re right. I played a lot of bad or semi-bad people, and you always have to be on the character’s side. So I spent a lot of time on that, [he says jokingly] and thought about kissing Paul a lot. I’m not a kisser, but we got into it.
I didn’t have any problem analyzing this character. That’s the shortest answer. It wasn’t really the tough part of it for me. And I like playing a father, even though he’s not a great father. But I think you can see he really does care about the guy, even though he chooses business over his own son. Those are the kind of things you have to finesse.
Witherspoon: Well, the great thing about working with Jim is that the character is all there. It was in his head for a while. It was always on the page. Sometimes you come in and look a dialogue, and you go, “Oh, how am I going to make this come out of my mouth and sound real?” I never had the experience as an actor where I came on set and everything I said down to the word was exactly what my character would say.
And actually, it was fun. It was sort of getting to have that opportunity to create a character around this perfect dialogue. The biggest challenge for me is that [Lisa] is not verbal. I’m used to playing really talkative characters and women who speak about their relationships and talk about love and dynamics and boys with their girlfriends. She doesn’t really have that Greek chorus of women around her. She does, and she’s like, “I don’t want to talk to you right now. I have to go.”
So that was a new character for me and really interesting. I had to meet a lot of women like that. Interestingly, because Jim had done a lot of the leg work in meeting all these female athletes, a lot of them are like that. Really, they talked about very little other than the game. They never talked about their relationships. I always tried to get more out of them. It’s really hard.
Brooks: It’s funny but my experience was really how much all of [the “How Do You Know” actors] brought, including the lines they come up with and everything else, and how much they brought to the game and how much wasn’t in the script I inherited, how much that formed the picture. So that’s it from my end.
Jack, what are your memories of making “Broadcast News” with Jim Brooks?
Nicholson: Memories of making “Broadcast News”? Jim asked me if I could do this. “It’s only a couple of lines, and you’ll only be here two minutes.”
Brooks: Two days.
Nicholson: Yeah, two days. Not much to do. And I knew a good restaurant in Washington, so I said, “Let’s meet for dinner.” And at the dinner he gave me 40 pages of news to read [the next day]. “And try on 11 suits at the same time.”
Brooks: He was supposed to pick from those 11 suits. He left Washington with all those 11 suits.
Nicholson: And always will!
Jack, what do you like to do in your free time?
Nicholson: Geez, it’s a press conference. I like to give great answers. I just like getting up sometime between 11 [a.m.] and 1 [p.m.] This is not movie hours, unless you’re doing night movies. Play golf. I’ve got a couple of kids in college, so I’m on the phone a lot. See my pals. Chase women around — not too much. Talk to my congressman. Go to funerals.
What about going to Lakers games?
Nicholson: That’s more of a job, actually.
As we get close to the holiday season, this question is for any of the actors: What’s the most memorable gift you’ve ever received?
Witherspoon: Well, that’s easy. I can just say that my kids are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. That’s such a gift in my life, definitely.
Paul, will we see you work with filmmakers David Wain and Judd Apatow again? And Owen, will we see you work with filmmaker Wes Anderson again?
Wilson: Yeah, I would definitely imagine that Wes and I would work on something together. He’s working on something now that I don’t think I’m actually going to be in.
Rudd: Think I can get an audition? I love Wes Anderson. I actually just finished shooting a movie [“Wanderlust”] with David directing, and Judd produced it. I hope to work with Judd again on another film, possibly. We talk all the time. At this point, I would say that both of those guys are good friends of mine, and we like working together. And hopefully, that will continue.
– examiner.com
The Morning Show (2019)
