What do Billie Lourd, Colin Hanks and Bette Midler have in common? The answer: They were all quite taken with Daniel Reisinger.
The charismatic Australian director (Swiped sideways, player) spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how he managed to put together such an impressive cast for a relatively exclusive British romantic comedy. And woman is one of the world premieres of this season’s Edinburgh Film Festival in the “out of competition” category.
Describing this film, written by Melissa Bubnic, as a romantic comedy is misleading. Protagonist Gemma, played by Irish actress Aisling Bea, is distraught and devastated when her fiancé Nathan (Hanks) drops dead months before their wedding. In a bizarre but incredibly endearing attempt to honor their love and distract herself from her own grief, she tries to marry him posthumously.
Lourd, the daughter of star Wars Legend Carrie Fisher is Nathan’s crazy and heavily pregnant sister Audrey, visiting from America. While Gemma argues with her loved ones who say her plan is ridiculous, Audrey helps her almost-sister-in-law get the legal approval she needs for the one-sided wedding. With top performances from the supporting cast, including Elizabeth McGovern, Harriet Walter, Peter Egan and Susan Wokoma, it’s a standout ensemble. As always, it’s a comedy tour de force from Lourd, who dropped a bombshell on Reisinger a few months before filming began.
“One day she calls me and says: ‘I have great but also terrible news, I’m pregnant,’” says Reisinger THR. “And I just thought, ‘Oh God, this is incredible. Of course this is incredible.’ And she said, ‘I have to get out of the movie. I don’t want to, but I really want you to make your movie and I don’t want to get in the way of you doing it.'”
Billie Lourd as Audrey in And woman
Advertising
Reisinger’s immediate reaction was to find a way to keep Lourd in the project. “She was the cornerstone of our film,” he says. So they came up with the plan to make Audrey a surrogate for a gay couple in the US, and suddenly Lourd was on set, filming while seven months pregnant. “I challenge you to ever find me a better portrayal of a truly seven-month pregnant woman in a comedic role. Was Frances McDormand pregnant in Fargo?” She wasn’t; the star was wearing a pregnancy pillow. “Because that’s the only thing I can think of that I could compare it to. I’m not even sure she was pregnant in it,” Reisigner says. “If you watch the movie, you’ll notice that she’s sitting in almost every scene.”
Hanks, who appears mostly in flashbacks as the film documents the early days of Nathan and Gemma’s relationship, came to the film quite late. “We sat down on one of those awkward Zoom calls where you don’t really know each other and you’re testing each other out to see if that’s a good fit,” the filmmaker admits. “I was in Paris and we started at midnight, right? So I said, ‘Colin, it’s midnight here, buddy, so I don’t want you to be offended because I know you’re shooting in Atlanta, but we have half an hour.'” Reisinger continues, “We got up until three in the morning. We could have kept talking all night. Let me tell you, a gem of a human being, so charming, so sensitive.”
He describes Bea as “undoubtedly the best actress I have ever worked with.” The Irish-born comedian is funny and dramatically powerful; she is “an absolute force among actresses.”
Reisinger, Lourd, Hanks and Bea have a common connection that makes them And woman: her own experiences with grief. Lourd’s mother Fisher and her grandmother Debbie Reynolds died within 48 hours of each other in December 2016. Hanks, the son of “global star” Tom Hanks, as Reisinger describes him, lost his mother in his late teens and Bea, her father, to suicide when she was just three years old. What the director called “a little tribe” was formed.
His mother Serina died of COVID in January 2022; a week later they got the green light from Universal for And woman“I felt like my mother was watching over us in the film,” says Reisinger. “And we wanted to help people laugh despite their tears (on And woman). We shouldn’t laugh at sadness, but for many people there are moments when we should.”
Here Reisinger reveals one of the most heartwarming details behind the scenes of the creation of And womanHis mother, a big Bette Middler fan, sang “The Rose” by her family shortly before her death. “My mother loved to sing (but) had no musical talent,” he says. “I mean, people without musical talent would be offended by my mother’s voice, and we all inherited her musical talent. So we gathered around her and flocked The Rose at the top of her lungs. And my mom opened her eyes for the last time and looked at all of us.”
The next day she died. But Reisinger wanted “The Rose” in his film. The team asked Middler for her permission, and she quickly granted it. “If my mother knew that Bette Midler had even the slightest idea who she was – excuse my language – my mother would be over the moon with joy.”
Those on the crew who had lost someone were also given the opportunity to dedicate their work to that person in the film’s credits, and Reisinger was delighted to be able to bring his work to Edinburgh.
“This is the opportunity of a lifetime. I’m so excited,” Reisinger adds. He praises EIFF director Paul Ridd, who wrote him such a nice letter to secure the Australian’s film that he felt obliged to forward it to the entire crew who worked on it. Reisinger ends his post by calling romantic comedies “his life’s work.” But for anyone who is grieving: And woman is a special treat for lovers of romantic comedies. “Hopefully this film will put its arm around your shoulder.”
And woman will have its world premiere on August 19th at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It will be released in the UK on September 2nd by Vertigo and in the US on September 30th by Vertical.
