Directed byClaire Scanlonand based on the book byGrant Ginder, the comedyThe People We Hate at the Weddingfollows a family who just can’t ever manage to see eye-to-eye. Siblings Alice (Kristen Bell) and Paul (Ben Platt) begrudgingly agree to accompany their mother (Allison Janney) to the English countryside where their estranged half-sister Eloise (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) is getting married. Once there, the wedding week becomes a drama-filled mess and the dysfunctional family realizes that they have to mend their differences before their relationship is forever fractured.
During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Bell talked about how fun this movie was to make, being the number one Platt fan in the world, keeping all of the characters grounded as their dysfunction is heightened, her wild fight scene withLizzy Caplan, and the craziest day of the shoot. She also talked about what it’s been like to get to voice a sloth in the world ofZootopia, what it means to her to be inducted as a Disney Legend, and whether that gets her any special theme park access.
Collider: Was this movie as fun to make as it seems like it would have been?
KRISTEN BELL: It was very fun, for a variety of reasons. Number one, it was the middle of the pandemic when I read it, and I was feeling this desperation to be involved in a project that was just joyful and fun, but not saccharin and sugar-coated, was genuinely funny, and also left you with a really good feeling in your heart. I had worked with Claire Scanlon, our director, onThe Good Place. Also, our children went to the same preschool. I think she’s one of the most capable directors out there, and I love the fact that she’s getting all the work in the world now. She sent me this script, with Ben [Platt] and Allison [Janney] already attached, and it read so easily. I was laughing out loud, while I was reading the script, which is always a very good sign. I had known Ben a little bit and Allison a little bit, and we folded into the family very easily. In truth, Allison was much more of a sibling than she was a mother, I’m gonna be honest. It just felt like a project that was meant to be. I had gone to college with Cynthia [Addai-Robinson] forever ago. This was just an incredibly nice group of people, blazing their way through London, having a ton of fun shooting a comedy. There’s no other way to describe it.
When I spoke to Ben for this, I told him that I’ve always had these fantasies in my head of musical theater people working together on a movie, always singing and dancing and doing performance numbers, at any moment. He said that while that’s not entirely true, you were humming and there was some musical stuff happening.
BELL: I’m the number one Ben Platt fan in the world, and he knows that. I’m sure it makes him feel very awkward, every time. He is the Paul McCartney of our household. My girls love him. I’ve seen everything he’s ever done. I love his voice. We didn’t sing as much as I wanted to, but he had just come off a project that was grueling and very musical, so I needed to play it cool for the long game. I needed to play the long game with him.
Did you have conversations with the director about how to find the right balance for this family, so that they never go so far in their awfulness that they can’t come back from it?
BELL: Not that specific conversation. The alternate conversation that happened in the beginning was that everyone should stay grounded. We let the character defects that each of these people are attempting to handle and the setting in which they’re thrust into be the mayhem of the movie. Every decision that we, as actors, were making was to stay grounded and natural, as much as possible. You have a really good script when someone can write a character that has the perfect features, personality and characteristics thrust into a problem that conflicts perfectly with that person’s personality. We have the right characters in the right setting, that created a perfect mess. Also, with every character’s backstory, which comes out throughout the film, you actually learn the reasons why they’re making such wild mistakes and terrible choices. They’re all very understandable, which was incredibly helpful, as an actor. I didn’t have to walk into a room acting drunk and knock over a bunch of China for no reason.
While in London for this wedding, your character gets into a full on fight that she really kind of deserves. What was it like to shoot that with Lizzy Caplan, surrounded by all those people? Did you get through that without breaking and laughing?
BELL: I giggled, but I wasn’t laughing hysterically, only because Lizzy Caplan is very important to me. I adore her. She did all of us a huge favor. She had just given birth. I’ve known Lizzy forever. I worked with her husband, Tom Riley, onThe Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window.They were living in London, so she did us a solid. We shot it in the middle of the night. So, to have a friend who is now a new mother that’s nursing, up in the middle of the night, working as a favor for me, my goal was to shoot that scene as quickly as humanly possible, with Lizzy feeling as wonderful as possible, and then get her home to her family. We were so grateful that she showed up because Lizzy Caplan is the type of actor that will deliver. You just know it. She’s so dependable, and I will forever be grateful that she suffered through an all-nighter after having just given birth.
It’s such an amazing moment. How well choreographed was all that, especially with you ending up in the food table?
BELL: There was zero of it that was choreographed. There was safety, for sure, and our stunt coordinators were great, but there were rough estimates, as to where Lizzy was throwing my body and where I was throwing Lizzy’s body. I knew how sleep-deprived she was, so my main goal was just taking care of Lizzy for that whole scene because I was so grateful to her.
This entire wedding situation goes downhill so fast. There are so many shenanigans happening. Was there a craziest day, or a day that most stands out for you, out of everything that you had to do for this?
BELL: Yeah. The sisters who wrote this movie [Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin and Wendy Molyneux] allowed everyone’s rock bottom to hit simultaneously, which is a very fun way to see a movie executed because when the shit hits the fan, there are shit and fan fragments everywhere. The hardest, craziest day for me was first thing in the morning, on the first day of shooting, when I was thrown into the Thames River in half of a bikini. There was something cruel about that scene. But at the end of the day, I remember high-fiving with Claire because the rest of the movie felt like a breeze. No one was gonna be pushed into 55 degrees of sewage river water, at any point during the rest of the film. We’d done it. We got it. That river was very, very cold. That was the first scene up.
I love the holiday family portrait at the end of this movie. It’s amazing to finally see this family come together, in that way, and I just love cheesy family portraits like that. Are you someone who likes to do family portraits? Is that a thing that you plan out?
BELL: Big time. And I’ll tell you, I’m the only one in my family that enjoys it. It’s a bit of a problem because my girls don’t wanna do it and my husband doesn’t wanna do it, so almost every family photo we have, someone’s moving while I’m perfectly still and ready to go. I like matching Halloween costumes. I like matching Christmas pajamas. I like a theme of any sort. We watch a lot of F1, so when there was the Monza race in Italy, I got us little headbands with green and white and red that said “Italy” on it, and wristbands that were like workout gear. Of course, I was the only one that wore them, but I won’t stop trying. I love family photo, but my family does not. I don’t know what else to say.
I love for you that you got to voice a sloth inZootopia, and I love even more for you that you got to bring that sloth back to life again for theZootopia+series for Disney+. What was your reaction to learning that you’d get to return to that character, and what does it mean to you to get to bring an animated sloth to life?
BELL: I like bringing anything animated to life. I love animation. I love stop-motion. I love toys. I love creativity. I just feel very at home in that world. And I learned so much working onFrozenthat I was incredibly flattered when they called me to doZootopia, which was truly two lines. It might have even been one. It was one line plus a laugh. I think they’re so creative. I can recognize it as an incredibly smart decision to ask the girl who publicly cried about a sloth and who also happens to be a voiceover artist to voice the sloth. I’ll do it forever. I’ll do any animated series for anyone, at any point. I like being in that booth more than I like almost anything.
It’s just awesome that they know you in such a way that they can even make the decision to connect you with that character.
BELL: It’s very familial over there. I just worked on something else that’s extra special, that’s coming out of Disney, which we’re not even supposed to be talking about. It’s very familial and they make the job very easy because of their level of creativity, from the animators to the Imagineers to the directors. It’s just beautiful.
What does it mean to you now to be inducted as a Disney Legend? When you were doing musical theater, wondering what a TV and film career could ever look like, what would that version of you have thought about being a Disney Legend?
BELL: It’s not something I could ever have anticipated. So, that feels like what someone should get when they’ve had a real long career, and for some reason, I don’t feel like have. I guess I have because I am at the point where I’ll meet someone who’s younger than me and they’ll be like, “I’ve been watching you since middle school.” I’m like, “Oh, my God, I’m 42.” It will be a 21-year-old saying, “I’ve been watching you since I was a kid,” and it’s such a funny feeling because I don’t feel like I’ve had a long career. On paper, I have, I suppose. But it’s certainly one of the highest honors I could ever imagine. I’m not entirely sure what it means or what it allows me to do, but I did ask immediately when I was handed the pin, “Listen, let’s just cut the BS. Does this get me into Club 33 or not?” That’s what I really wanted to know. I was like, “You said this pin opens doors. What does that mean? Is that door Club 33?”
I was going to ask you if you get access to anything in the theme parks that average folks don’t get access to.
BELL: I have been to Club 33 one time. I will say that being a part of the Disney family is a whole lot of fun. They hire very nice people who have become very long term friends. And everything about those experiences, whether it’s going to D23, or recording the actual movie ofFrozen, or recording some of the spinoff specials we’ve done. Everything feels very magical because you recognize what it means to the audience members, particularly the kids. There’s something about having the honor of living in a child’s imagination that’s hard to articulate how special it feels.
The People We Hate at the Weddingis available to stream at Prime Video.
