Sibling relationships are hard and they’re even harder if you don’t like the people you’re related to. The People We Hate At the Wedding is a new movie from Prime Video that explores what happens when two siblings, Alice and Paul (played by Kristen Bell and Ben Platt) go to their older sister Eloise’s wedding (played by Cynthia Addai-Robinson). The problem? They hate her. Not because she’s terrible but because growing up, she had a father with money and neither of them did.
Eloise is their half-sister (something that hurts me to write because as I said in my interviews with the cast, I have a half-brother but if I ever called him that, my mother would have thrown me out with the trash). Both Paul and Alice struggle in their own lives and they feel that much worse about their own problems when they see how successful and happy their older sister seems to be. Thus begins their hate-filled journey to England for Eloise’s wedding.
I was lucky enough to talk with the cast prior to the film’s release and in talking with Kristen Bell and Ben Platt, I asked them about building the bond they have in the film with each other while also establishing that disaffection their characters have with their older sister. For Bell, she says it was easy to hit it off with Platt because she is his self-named number-one fan.
“It was very easy to fall into a sibling relationship with Ben. I mean I am definitely Ben Platt the performer’s number one fan for sure,” Bell said. “I know every single album, I’ve seen everything he’s ever been in on stage and in film. But there was also something about his activity as an artist that I just felt was like drawing me in. And I was like, ‘I know I’m gonna be friends with this person at some point.’ He’s too special. And when we met, he did not disappoint at all. So it was easy to fall into that dynamic with him of like, ‘Oh, I think we might have known each other for a hundred years.'”
You can see our full interview here:
Eloise and her siblings
For Addai-Robinson, Eloise is an interesting character. Mainly because what she wants and the reality of her situation are two different things. Her siblings don’t like her but Eloise still wants that big happy family. I asked her about building that dynamic with Platt and Bell for the film.
“In the case of Eloise, there’s definitely that feeling of, ‘I feel estranged and different and separate and that’s not what I want,” Addai Robinson said. “‘I want my family to be one big happy family’ and there is that sense of resentment from her siblings. So it’s interesting when you sort of understand that and it’s another thing entirely to try and create that with other actors.”
Everyone can find love.
Alice (Bell) might be in a complicated place at the start of the movie but she also has one of the best Meet-Cutes in recent movie history: Meeting a cute boy on a plane and talking about Paddington. That cute boy in question is played by Dustin Milligan (yes, Ted from Schitt’s Creek). And getting to talk to him was an absolute delight!
I asked about that rom-com meeting (that the internet will love) and he was so excited by it. “I mean, it was such a dream getting to play this character in this specific movie,” he said. “Because like you said, so much of it has to do with this family having sort of lost their way with each other, coming back and in a disastrous and hilarious way sort of finding that new definition of their family. But for Kristen Bell’s character Alice, a big part of that journey has to do with specifically running into this guy Dennis randomly on an airplane. They watch Paddington together and then end up hooking up immediately after as a story. We can all relate to who hasn’t had that exact thing happen to them,” he joked.
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The People We Hate At the Wedding is available on Amazon Prime Video today!
(image: Prime Video)
