Hallie Meyers-Shyer had Michael Keaton in mind when she wrote her upcoming film Goodrich — so she was beyond thrilled when he agreed to sign on as the film’s titular character.
“It was Michael or bust,” Meyers-Shyer, who also directed the family comedy, exclusively told Us Weekly. “When somebody has a body of work behind them like Michael does, you can really picture how they would say things, and it helped me write him comedically, it helped me write him honestly. It helped me come up with ideas. Because I would think, ‘How funny would Michael Keaton be doing this?’ So when he actually said yes, that just was the stars aligning.”
Keaton, fresh off his success with Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, portrays Andy, an art gallery owner who finds his life turned upside down when his wife, Naomi (Laura Benanti), reveals she’s checked herself into a 90-day rehab facility and left him to take care of their 9-year-old twins. To help him from spiraling, he calls eldest daughter Grace, played by Mila Kunis, to help stay afloat.
While speaking to Us, Meyers-Shyer said that she hadn’t “seen” Keaton in a heartfelt comedy in “a really long time,” and knew that audiences would want to see him get “vulnerable” on screen. “I was excited to explore that,” she said.
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Keaton’s performance is only elevated by the presence of Kunis, who Meyers-Shyer, , who prevously directed 2017’s Home Again, said was a top choice for Grace due to how universally “beloved” she is by both “men and women.”
“We’ve kind of grown up with her,” she explained. “And I thought it would be really interesting to see her in this role as a daughter and a new mother. And [like Michael], she’s somebody I’ve seen so many times, but I hadn’t seen this side of her, so I was thrilled that she came on board with us.”
Grace is Andy’s daughter from his marriage to his first wife (Andie McDowell) and the pair have both an easy yet fractured rapport, navigating the ebbs and flows of their relationship as the film unfolds. In an exclusive first look shared with Us (which you can watch above), the duo struggle to get on the same page as Andy accidentally unloads all of his problems on his pregnant daughter.
“I am so sorry, I shouldn’t have laid this all on you I’m sorry,” Andy says to a tearful Grace as they sit on a bench atop a mountain. “It’s fine, honestly, this happens all the time I can’t control,” she replies. “I just know how much your work means to you and I don’t know what to say, I hate seeing you like this.”
“I hate being like this,” he agrees as she begs him not to cry. “I saw you cry once, I hated it. Don’t do it.”
“Maybe I should cry. If there was a time to cry this would be a good time. But I won’t,” he jokes and the pair start to laugh. “I’m going to be fine,” he finally adds. “Let’s go climb a hill or something.”
Meyers-Shyer said that while looking for the “right person” to play Grace, it was important she cast someone with a “screen presence and confidence” that could go “toe to toe” with a legendary actor like Keaton — and Kunis fit the bill.
“A lot of their relationship is a bit of a boxing match between the two of them,” she explained. “And it was really important. So when she came in, it felt so perfect. They are also both so comically talented, so they were able to go in and out of that kind of, ‘I love you, I hate you. I love you. I hate you’ thing so well.”
She added, “It’s really beautiful when two actors align like that — because you kind of just get to watch the magic happen as they do do this dance. And I think all three of us were really aligned on wanting to emulate that child-parent relationship where you can be arguing and then one second later be saying, ‘OK, I love you. Bye.’”
Hallie, who is the daughter of acclaimed directors Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer — think The Parent Trap, The Holiday and Father of the Bride, to name a few — often pulls from her “real life” when writing, and Goodrich was no exception. Her parents were married to nearly two decades before their 1999 split. The multi-hyphenate said she brought aspects of her own story when it came to crafting Grace, who is also navigating life as a new mother and (now adult) child of divorce.
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“There were so many themes that I connected to personally, and I think when you connect to something personally then other people do too, because a lot of things that we feel a lot of people are going through,” she explained, noting that making it personal is often “her way” into directing actors. “With something like this, that is so personal,I would share stuff and it creates a bond with you and the actors, and then they share. That’s the great thing about making movies that are not superhero movies and that are personal stories about fathers and daughters; you can all bond over these things.”
Goodrich hits theaters on Friday, October 18.
