Booksmart's Stars Say the Movie Will Make You "Laugh Until You Pee Your Pants"
Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are the stars of Booksmart (Olivia Wilde's directorial debut), the teen dramedy that's already being compared to classics such as The Breakfast Club.
OprahMag.com chatted with the leading actresses to discuss why this film had to be made-and why sometimes, not rehearsing is the best way to get an actor's best.
Watch the trailer below-and catch Booksmart in select theaters May 17 and in theaters everywhere May 24.
The best movies about high school aren't just for teens. The success of Amy Heckerling comedies like Clueless and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, half of John Hughes' canon (like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club), and more recently, the Oscar-nominated Lady Bird, suggest that most American audiences can connect with films about the collective experience of spending four years with the same group of people.
There's a shared bond that comes with an era of hyper-intense feelings and the want for acceptance; a nostalgia that continues for long after you've left the hallways of your own high school. And while everyone can see themselves in at least one of many teen movie stereotypes-the jock, the theater geek, the nerd, the stoner, the loner-perhaps the most universal feeling is one of being misunderstood.
The latest addition to the teen movie genre is Booksmart, actress Olivia Wilde's directorial debut film, which follows two best friends who spend their entire freshman through senior year career solely preparing for what comes next. That's Yale for school president Molly (Ladybird's Beanie Feldstein), and some time spent volunteering in Botswana for activism-focused Amy (Kaitlyn Dever of Justified). Together, they've forgone any non-educational extracurriculars, choosing to becoming fluent in Mandarin and intersectional feminism, and ignore classmates who think of them as teachers pets.
The life-long besties are surprised, though, when their peers reveal they were somehow able to balance good times with good grades ("I'm incredible at hand jobs," one classmate tells them, "but I also got a 1560 on the SATs.") Molly is instantly frustrated that she missed out on having the kind of debauchery expected of and experienced by people her age ( "Nobody knows that we are fun!" Molly bemoans. "We haven't broken any rules!"), so on the night before graduation, she enlists Amy for one first-last hurrah.
OprahMag.com spoke with Booksmart stars Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever in Los Angeles recently, where they talked about comparisons to other films, what scripted moments they were nervous to shoot, and why they didn't rehearse one crucial scene beforehand.
Booksmart is sometimes referred to as the "female version" of buddy comedies like Superbad. How do you feel about those comparisons?
Kaitlyn Dever: "Without movies like The Breakfast Club and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Superbad, we wouldn't have had Booksmart, and I think we had reached a point where the world was really ready for a movie like Booksmart. All of these films really represent that time and that generation and we just wanted to create a generational anthem for 2019 with a very diverse cast, and the soundtrack that we have really defined this current state. I think that it's a huge compliment, but we never wanted to be the female version of 'insert movie.' We wanted to stand alone, but also we never wanted these two girls having the same dialogue as the men do in comedies."
Beanie Feldstein: "I think Bridesmaids did an exceptional job of it, but it's obviously depicting women at a very different moment in their lives, losing their best friend to a different situation, getting married. But in [Booksmart], it really is the moment of that sort of break up you have to have with your best friend."
Why do you think a movie like Booksmart is so important?
KD: "All of my friends are so funny. Young women are so hilarious and I think it's so great that we weren't even making this movie just for women. We're not just these smart girls-we're smart and fun. We are gross and silly. We just really wanted to represent our close best friendships that we have."
BF: "We talk about it all the time-it's so much more prevalent on TV than on film. We all are obsessed with Pen15. Even Kaitlyn and I grew up on Lizzie McGuire. I don't know why in film it's just a little bit behind, but we're so honored and deeply grateful to be a part of not just a female friendship on screen, but such an honest, real, intelligent one. It's not just one incredibly multifaceted complex smart woman, it's two and they're never competitive with each other. Ever! They're the opposite. They're, like, too obsessed with each other."
KD: "It's not a makeover movie. This movie is not about going after the guy-that was not our main goal for this night, to hook up with our biggest crush at school. The movies I grew up on, oftentimes the woman feels the need to straighten her hair to be accepted by her crush or change something about themselves in order to be accepted by society or the people at school that they're surrounded by."
What would you say to men who think they can't connect to a movie starring two young women?
BF: "My dad does not like everything I've been in or my family [her brother is Jonah Hill] has been in, and he will tell you straight. [laughs] He is a quiet, thoughtful sweet man and he left Booksmart and was like 'Well, The Godfather is my favorite film, but I'd say after The Godfather, 'Booksmart.' I was like 'This is a 67-year-old accountant!' I was kind of nervous for him to see it. I was like 'What's he going to make of this?' And he was roaring. It showed me, genuinely, how universal love is, how universal friendship is, how universal high school is, a time in our life we're all nostalgic for."
It's still very rare to see a young lesbian character in a film, much less a lead one. How does that element add something special to Booksmart?
KD: "It kind of just reminds me of why I wanted to be an actor in the first place. I love playing Amy, and getting to play a girl whose sexuality was not on a pedestal and not put under a spotlight was a huge thing for me. And the fact that it is a) doing really, really well but b) allowing young girls to feel so seen and heard-the fact I've been able to do that for just one person is incredible. I feel really honored. Amy's not the butt of the joke. And it's all thanks to Olivia and really wanting to change the game and wanting to represent this generation exactly for what it is and I think that's always good."
BF: "The only love scene in the film is a queer love scene, which is so dope. As someone who is also queer, I think it's incredibly meaningful. I always think of the moment where Kaitlyn is so brilliantly untying the Converse and then taking off the pants. Olivia is so brilliant in the way she depicts real moments. Guys wear Converse, genderfluid people wear Converse, women wear Converse-no matter who you are hooking up with or who you are in that hookup, there are those awkward moments of 'How do I get this off?' and 'I'm also giving consent' and 'I'm also laughing' and 'I want to be sexy' and 'How do I do this'? And the fact that that is depicted through two women hooking up is so beautiful."
KD: "I always remember looking back on high school hookup scenes. You don't really see the little specificities, you don't see the awkwardness. Sometimes in films, those hookup scenes or sex scenes can be oversexualized-especially for women-and I think I was really happy to be a part of a scene like that. I think Olivia handled it so well. She never wanted to oversexualize these girls in that scene."
What was the most difficult scene to shoot?
KD: "[The fight scene] was the only scene we hadn't rehearsed together and we read separately. That was something Olivia wanted us to do, just because we wanted to be able to see each other's faces in that way for the very first time. Which was honestly really scary and actually heartbreaking because as an actor, normally you would rehearse that kind of scene or if you had to audition for the thing, that would be one of your audition scenes or something."
BF: "All of our other scenes together, other than that scene, are when we get to enjoy each other and make each other laugh and make each other think and I'd never seen Kaitlyn's face like that. I'd never seen her body and her energy that raw and vulnerable and it was so kind of, like, rattling-that is what they were experiencing because they had never fought. It's kind of giving me chills thinking about it because it's such a unique experience as an actor I will always cherish from this film."
KD: "[Y]ou start fighting and then it gets to this point where you're just yelling at each other to yell, and what I thought was so beautiful about the way Olivia cut out the sound. I think that was the perfect way to go about it because again, if you're in a fight with someone you really, really love, you just start yelling to yell and you're saying things you don't mean and you're both right and you're both wrong. And there's really nowhere to go from there."
BF: "I've had that same scenario in my life before. In that moment, it's unbearable because you're tumbling down the hill and you can't stop, but you don't even like what you're saying anymore, and you don't like yourself for saying it. And that's what that moment really is-it's such a real moment."
KD: "It was really sad, but I think it ended up being great for the film. What I love about this movie, it's not all laughs the whole time. It's not just comedy-there's a lot of heart to this movie and I think that that's another reason people are loving it so much. It will not only make you laugh until you pee your pants, but it'll make you cry."
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