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Interview: Nick Kroll on Writing Believable Sibling Relationships in Adult Beginners

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Nick Kroll is probably best known as a sketch comic from his Comedy Central series, The Kroll Show, and as one of several obsessed fantasy football players in The League. But the comic also co-wrote (and developed the story) for the more realistic dramedy Adult Beginners, costarring Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale (both currently in Spy). In the film, out now on DVD/Blu-Ray, Kroll plays the narcissistic younger brother of pregnant Byrne, who comes home to regroup after a failed business venture and is put to work as his nephew’s babysitter. Kroll discussed what interested him about exploring the brother-sister bonds and the necessity of including a female voice in the writing team.

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Lesley Coffin (TMS): What was the original spark of inspiration for this film?

Nick Kroll: The story felt very true to life for me, because I have 12 nieces and nephews but have rarely been asked to baby-sit for any of them, because I’m the youngest in my family and maybe not the most reliable among them. So that was the springboard for me, but once we brought in Liz Flahive and Jeff Cox to write the script and the Duplass Brothers as the producers, who were involved from the beginning, we really just connected over this idea of exploring sibling relationships. Because the movie is about my character taking care of his nephew, but the movie is really about the relationship between brothers and sisters. And that was what I and everyone who came on board really related to.

TMS: How did Rose Byrne get involved?

Kroll: When we sent Rose the script, she responded to right away and asked to sit down with us and talk about the character. And we’re both the youngest of four; she has a brother and two sisters, and I have a brother and two sisters, so we were both on the same page about the complicated relationship we have with our siblings. You love each other very much, but you can also drive each other crazy.

But we both really connected to that aspect of the story, as well as being from the same generation that feels like, “We’re adults, we have the responsibilities of an adult, and yet, in a lot of ways, we don’t feel like adults.” If you ask the average person in their 30s, “Do you feel like an adult?” they’re going to probably say, “Technically yes, but really no?” So we connected over that element of the story too.

TMS: Was it narratively important that Rose’s character be the older sibling?

Kroll: Everyone’s relationship and stories are different, but in my case, my brother is the oldest, and then the two sisters and then me, and my sisters just always seemed to have their shit together more than my brother and me. I would say in general, women have their act together more than men do. And even when men are highly capable and accomplished, when it comes to the day to day maneuvering in life, women seem to have a better grasp on how to get things done. So it felt like that was part of it. In terms of my character, he had sort of avoided his family and looked elsewhere, leaving Rose’s character to maintain and take care of a lot of stuff on her own. So it isn’t a surprise that she is sort of resentful and thinks her little brother is pretty selfish and immature.

TMS: Watching the movie, I was never sure if your character had become narcissistic because of the job or was always narcissistic and the job just fit his personality.

Kroll: In my mind, he was a guy who was kind of charming and out there and the life of the party, so something like a tech start-up and wearable technology is the same as being in the talent show or captain of the soccer team in high school. He always wants to be at the center of the action. But when his business falls apart, you realize he never had the follow-through necessary to really make things happen. And you can skate through like that for a while, but once you get into the big leagues, you aren’t going to get away with it. He realized he couldn’t get away with just being charming anymore.

TMS: Why did you bring on a team of writers to script the film rather than write the film independently?

Kroll: At the time, I was working on both The Kroll Show and The League, so I didn’t have much time to devote to it. But more importantly, I wanted at least one if not more than one female voice involved in the scripting of it, because I really wanted to capture what it’s like to be a woman, but more importantly, what it’s like to be a working mother—how complicated that experience can be.

When we found Liz and Jeff to write it, they were perfect. They’re married in real life and have kids, and Liz was actively working as a writer at the time and Jeff worked from home, so they had a great grasp of what the characters were going through. I just felt their voice would be helpful in creating authentic characters I wouldn’t naturally be able to create on my own.

TMS: Did they write anything that you’d never thought about before or was a total surprise?

Kroll: Oh yeah. There were things all over the script that were so detailed and specific I would have never thought of. Like the speed that parents will eat, the scene when my character is having dinner with Rose and Bobby, and they’re shoveling food in their faces because they’ve been starving all day and don’t have time to eat, so they’ve trained themselves to eat unbelievably quickly.

Or how complicated it is to open a stroller and what “mommy and me” classes or like. Or just wanting to sit in your car alone for a while, eating whoppers and watching Channing Tatum movies—all things they were able to bring to all the characters, not just Rose and Bobby’s. They also really locked into my character, and they’re also gifted writers of both comedy and drama, so they were great to work with.

TMS: The basic premise could be the ingredients for a pretty wacky comedy. Did you ever consider making it a broader comedy?

Kroll: There were bits that came in and out of the script which leaned more towards broad comedy, and for the most part, we didn’t use them because we liked the idea of this story being realistic—allowing things to be funny when they’re funny and sad when they’re sad and sometimes both. Working with Mark Duplass, who really helped us shape the movie, made us really straddle that line between comedy and drama, because we were more interested in telling that story about a real brother and sister, rather than all the broad stuff.

TMS: The Duplass Brothers also produced the movie The Skeleton Twins, which has narrative similarities to this film. Were you ever concerned about comparisons?

Kroll: Mark and our producer Jared Goldman worked on that film as well, so we were always aware that, on paper, there were some similarities. But the movies are actually pretty different, so while I was aware of Skeleton Twins and really loved that movie, it felt like we were always trying to do different things. But I wasn’t surprised when we were compared to that film. It’s interesting, because the brother-sister story hasn’t really been explored that much in cinema, and it’s such a rich area. It just happened that both movies were swimming in the same water, because these brother-sister relationships are really important to how people become who they are.

TMS: What was it about examining a brother-sister relationship, rather than two brothers or two sisters, that was so interesting to you?

Kroll: I just always thought the older sister/younger brother dynamic was a fascinating relationship, because older sisters can be such good caretakers of their little brothers and at least my sisters took a lot of ownership over me and helped me become the person I am—a person they would want to have around. And that’s awesome, but it does put pressure on both of us. So that was a dynamic I really wanted to examine.

TMS: How did your family react to the film?

Kroll: They were proud that I physically made a movie, because it takes a lot of work. But I also think they genuinely liked the movie, because it’s about family and is a pretty hopeful one but also doesn’t shy away from real complications. So they like the movie, or at least that’s what they’ve been telling me.

Lesley Coffin is a New York transplant from the midwest. She is the New York-based writer/podcast editor for Filmoria and film contributor at The Interrobang. When not doing that, she’s writing books on classic Hollywood, including Lew Ayres: Hollywood’s Conscientious Objector and her new book Hitchcock’s Stars: Alfred Hitchcock and the Hollywood Studio System.

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