Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern’s Friendship Speaks to the Power of the Press Tour
By Hilary Weaver. Photos: Getty Images, Courtesy of Instagram.
There are the press tours where stars are thrown together because they they have to promote their film, and vows of friendship are part of the game, authentic or not. And then there’s Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern. The press tour to promote their 2014 film Wild sparked a long-lasting relationship that endures, even though, in the most Hollywood of twists, they now play arch enemies on HBO's Big Little Lies.
In a joint interview with The New York Times, the pair—who are only nine years apart but played mother and daughter in Wild—recalled their teenage-style chumming around on the Portland, Oregon, leg of the Wild press tour. Yes, there was plenty of wine and junk food:
”On the press tour [in Portland, Oregon], we ate a ton of food at Tasty n Alder and, after a few glasses of wine, ran around Powell’s Books creating an impromptu traveling book club. Then we went to [Voodoo Doughnut](http://voodoodoughnut.com) and ate “Wild”-themed doughnuts the owners created for our premiere. We were together all over the world for five months. She taught me to love Red Vines. She taught me about brown lipstick.”
Dern agreed:
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“You know someone is your favorite person when you’ve done a day of press, listened to yourself ad nauseam, listened to them tell every story, and when it ends, it’s like, “Are we going to eat something?”
As much as press-tour friendships are a familiar narrative—think of Chris Pratt’s drawn-out Instagram prank on Jennifer Lawrence during the Passengers rollout, or Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth endlessly teasing each other as Marvel movie promotion ramps up—it's rare to see them endure the way Dern and Witherspoon’s has. (Only time will tell if Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, whose B.F.F. status has overshadowed nearly everything else about their movie Life, will go the distance).
And we'll also see what happens now that Witherspoon has met another on-set kindred spirit—A Wrinkle in Time co-star Mindy Kaling, who featured prominently in several on-set Instagram snaps:
Could this be another press-tour friendship in the making? Not if Dern has anything to say about it.
“I get so upset. My daughter said to me the other day, ‘I saw the funniest picture of Reese with Mindy Kaling, it was so cute,’ she jokingly told the Times, making a sobbing sound. “It’s like middle school.”
This story originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
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