The cast of ‘Rosaline,' including Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, Kyle Allen, Sean Teale, and Minnie Driver are joined by Director Karen Maine to discuss Hulu’s hilarious twist on ‘Romeo & Juliet.’ Watch as they discuss their favorite recreated scenes and characters, past works like ‘Booksmart’ and ‘Will and Grace,’ and future projects like Sony’s 'Madame Web.'
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 - When you were working endlessly,
00:02 me and Kyle had some time
00:03 and we really did develop a bromance.
00:05 I was like, what a shame that we let this Rosalind
00:07 get in the way of our good times.
00:09 - Shall we?
00:10 - Whatever.
00:11 - Have a good time.
00:12 (upbeat music)
00:15 - What's something new you feel like you guys
00:20 brought to Romeo and Juliet
00:21 that we've yet to see in books before?
00:23 Because, you know, obviously it's such a character
00:26 that's been played so many times.
00:28 - Well, I think we get to see them outside
00:30 of the relationship that we normally see them in,
00:31 outside of the settings that we normally see them in.
00:35 I think it's important to do that with these love stories
00:39 and these female characters that we know
00:40 to be kind of one dimensional and kind of motivated by love,
00:45 as opposed to motivated by, you know,
00:47 the self seeking kind of tendencies.
00:51 So I think, you know, we get to see Juliet find herself
00:54 in a way and then at the end realize, you know,
00:57 what she actually wants.
00:58 - I didn't teach that in school.
01:00 - Wait till you get to page 74.
01:02 - Right, Kyle.
01:03 - I think that Romeo is seldom played
01:07 as ridiculous as he is.
01:11 And I think I got to sort of show up
01:14 and be about as ridiculous as Romeo actually, actually is.
01:19 I think he's clueless and I really got to play into that.
01:26 - I never saw true beauty until this night.
01:29 - Why are you talking like that?
01:30 - What I really, I mean, what drew me to the script
01:33 was that it's very much kind of a coming of age story
01:36 of a young woman really finding her voice.
01:39 And, you know, she thinks at the beginning of the film
01:42 that she's, you know, already found it
01:45 and that she's sort of railing against all these pressures
01:49 that are put upon her as kind of an open-minded woman
01:52 in a very closed-minded world, which was Renaissance,
01:56 at least in terms of how women were treated.
02:00 - I'd rather eat rotten goat innards.
02:04 I don't want an arranged marriage.
02:06 - You're a woman.
02:08 You're not supposed to talk about what you want.
02:10 - I just like to, I'm drawn to projects where women,
02:13 you know, feel like women I know or feel like myself.
02:17 And I feel like Rosalyn could easily be me
02:21 and she's very stubborn and headstrong in the beginning
02:24 and thinks she knows everything.
02:26 And then, you know, her world is kind of exploded open
02:29 and she, at the end, you know, finds what she needs.
02:32 And I just think that's a classic story,
02:35 really beautiful that anyone can relate to
02:37 at any age in their life and any gender.
02:41 - Star-crossed lovers that couldn't live apart.
02:43 That's pretty good.
02:44 - What classic, like, Romeo and Juliet moment
02:47 was like the most fun for you to put a twist on?
02:51 - Oh, I mean, I guess even starting with the opening,
02:56 I mean, this obviously isn't a part
02:58 of the original Romeo and Juliet,
03:00 but it's sort of the audience kind of first thinks,
03:03 oh, you see this woman on a balcony.
03:05 She's calling Romeo, who is this woman?
03:07 And I think that that was a really fun little moment
03:10 to sort of like trick the audience into thinking
03:12 that this is a Romeo and Juliet story.
03:15 - Yes, it's adjacent.
03:17 It's like, it is the same, but it's not.
03:19 - Right.
03:20 - Under the blessed moon, I vow I shall speak.
03:22 - You're the girl!
03:23 - Oh!
03:23 - Oh, oh, okay.
03:25 - Are you okay?
03:26 - I, no.
03:27 - Solely in a selfish way,
03:29 'cause it was a fun day filming it,
03:30 but the death scene.
03:31 - Oh, yes.
03:32 - We put our spin on it,
03:33 and the death scene in the movie was just great.
03:35 - It's so, like--
03:36 - It was all of us together in this big, beautiful church,
03:39 and we just laughed for two days, actually.
03:41 - Yeah.
03:42 - So that was, for me, that was it,
03:43 because actually the rest of my story
03:45 doesn't involve Romeo and Juliet at all.
03:48 So I didn't put a spin on Romeo and Juliet at all.
03:50 - Definitely the scene at the end
03:52 where we believe the lovers are dead in the crypt,
03:54 and in our story, they're not actually dead,
03:58 was very difficult to do,
04:02 because you do have grieving parents,
04:04 but you also have this comedic moment of,
04:06 you know, Rosalind looking at Juliet,
04:11 telling her to pretend to stay dead,
04:13 and looking at me to try and,
04:15 whilst also Caitlin's character, Rosalind,
04:17 has this wonderful moment where she really gets to speak
04:20 to the two warring houses and say,
04:23 "Pull yourselves together.
04:24 "Why are you always fighting?"
04:26 So there's, I think it's my favorite scene,
04:28 because it's this wonderful coming together.
04:30 It's artful, it's really well-written,
04:32 and I think it's very well-acted.
04:34 - They couldn't live in peace.
04:36 At least let them rest in it.
04:39 - (laughs) I love, I don't know if you have one.
04:45 I really loved when I'm kinda just sitting in my room
04:48 and Rosalind surprises me,
04:50 and then you hear Romeo outside going,
04:52 throwing rocks at my window and going like, "Juliet!"
04:55 And I'm like, "I don't know what, I gotta get rid of him."
04:56 And so seeing that kind of similar setting
05:00 that we're used to seeing,
05:01 but then a completely different backstory
05:04 as to how it goes down is really incredible to me
05:07 and refreshing, and it's funny,
05:08 'cause she's getting her lines from Rosalind,
05:11 which Romeo has no clue.
05:13 ♪ I got this feeling on a summer day when you were gone ♪
05:16 - So you're gonna break them up?
05:17 - Of course I am, Romeo and Juliet.
05:19 Doesn't even sound right.
05:21 - I absolutely loved the soundtrack
05:23 and the things you got to do with them.
05:24 I was wondering how fun it was
05:26 to work with those modern songs in a classic setting.
05:30 - Yeah, it was great.
05:31 I mean, I wanted the music to really encapsulate
05:34 that anachronistic feeling between old and new
05:38 that's present in the film.
05:39 So we took songs from all recent decades
05:44 and put a sort of old Renaissance spin on them
05:50 by using period instrumentation
05:52 that we actually recorded, lutes, flutes,
05:55 harpsichord, harp, organ, all sorts of things
05:59 to give it a kind of older feel,
06:02 but obviously still recognizable and modern,
06:06 which is what the general film is going for in general.
06:10 So it was really fun to do a Renaissance cover
06:15 of "Dancing on My Own" by Robert.
06:17 I mean, that was, who could?
06:19 It's a dream.
06:20 So we did that with so many other songs.
06:23 I think it's really great.
06:26 - I just wonder if all this drama
06:28 is adding to the attraction.
06:30 - Kind of in honor of this film,
06:33 is there any side character from one of your other movies
06:36 or personal favorite movies that you'd like to see explored
06:39 from another perspective after watching this film?
06:42 - Good question.
06:42 - Hmm, okay.
06:44 - That's gonna be tough.
06:46 - I got it already.
06:47 - You got it already?
06:48 Go, go, go.
06:49 - So Booksmart.
06:50 I think seeing Noah Galvin
06:55 and exploring his perspective would be a dream come true.
07:01 I mean, his character is just,
07:05 George is just iconic,
07:07 and I'd love to see a George film.
07:10 - I will be directing,
07:12 and Alan may be starring pending auditions.
07:17 - He is fantastic, and that whole film is amazing.
07:19 That character is so, so good.
07:21 - Yeah.
07:22 - But what other side characters would we like?
07:23 I mean, I'm sure there's some side characters
07:25 that are super bad that would,
07:26 like that had just flashes of being in it.
07:28 - Yeah.
07:29 - I'm blanking completely on any movie I've ever seen,
07:33 obviously, because you just asked that question.
07:35 - My pick for you is Billy Lord,
07:38 so perfect, I'm so happy.
07:40 - That's what my next thing,
07:41 I was gonna say, like maybe Billy Lord would be an amazing,
07:44 and she's also iconic in that.
07:47 - No!
07:48 No!
07:49 - Me?
07:50 - Both, honestly, both of them, both of them.
07:52 They could be in the movie together.
07:53 - Let's talk to Hulu.
07:54 - All right.
07:55 - All right.
07:56 - Well, I mean, no, I mean, seriously,
07:58 like Lorraine Finster on "Will & Grace"
08:01 needed her own spinoff, for sure.
08:04 I would like to see her in lots of different,
08:06 in lots of different shows.
08:08 - I wouldn't dream of not being here.
08:10 - I also love the character that I play on "Starstruck,"
08:13 which, funnily enough, Karen Main directed.
08:16 I play a really terrible agent,
08:19 and I would really like her to be in something else.
08:22 - I should fire you.
08:24 - Oh, you're not gonna fire me.
08:26 - A star has formed you.
08:27 - There's a few.
08:28 I mean, yeah, God, I could go on.
08:31 I could go on and on.
08:33 I love the character in "Big Night."
08:34 I wanna know what happened to her.
08:36 50s girl on the Jersey Shore,
08:38 just treated badly by Stanley Tucci.
08:43 I don't know.
08:45 Maybe every supporting character I've played,
08:47 I'd love to know what happened to them.
08:49 - I wanna explore Steve the Courier from this film.
08:52 I want him to have his own movie in the sequel,
08:54 because he's just incredible,
08:56 and probably my favorite character in this movie.
08:58 - Yeah, 100%.
09:02 - I think it was discussed at length on set
09:05 that I would love for there to be a spinoff romance
09:08 between Romeo and Dario,
09:12 'cause I just feel like everyone can fall in love with Dario,
09:16 and Romeo falls in love with everyone,
09:17 so I just think it'd be a great story.
09:20 I just think they'd be great.
09:21 They'd have a great bromance.
09:23 - That'd be fun.
09:24 - I would love that.
09:25 We got so excited when we saw each other on set.
09:28 We were like, "We actually have a moment
09:30 "to actually do something."
09:31 And we'd spend the whole summer together.
09:33 We did a lot of historical tours together.
09:35 We spent a lot of time just riffing,
09:37 'cause being around Kyle is a day very well spent,
09:40 as you know. - It is.
09:41 - I mean, with anyone.
09:42 Me and Kyle had a lot of,
09:43 when you were working endlessly,
09:46 me and Kyle had some time,
09:47 and we really did develop a bromance.
09:49 I was like, "What a shame that we let this Rosalind
09:51 "get in the way of our good time."
09:53 So I would happily do a spinoff.
09:55 As long as we could do some more, too.
09:57 I would have a spinoff.
09:59 We have one moment at the end of the movie
10:00 where he tries to speak to me.
10:02 - That moment is so good.
10:03 I really am glad they kept that in.
10:05 It's so good.
10:07 - And it's the most that we got,
10:08 and it's the only thing we get,
10:09 and it's quite special to both of us.
10:11 So I'd love to do that with Kyle.
10:13 Anything with Kyle would be great.
10:14 - Okay, buddy.
10:16 - I'm so excited to see Kyle as Sheman
10:20 and Isabella in "The Spider-Verse."
10:23 I was wondering what your reactions were
10:25 getting to be part of these upcoming high-profile projects.
10:28 - Kyle?
10:32 - Go for it.
10:33 I'd love to know, Isabella, how excited you are.
10:36 - Excited?
10:40 I am excited.
10:42 Very excited.
10:46 So I like "The Spider-Verse."
10:51 I just discovered the Miles Morales game on the PS4.
10:56 So that's very fun.
10:59 I hope there's a "Madame Web" game too.
11:01 I'm very excited to see this universe kind of play out,
11:06 as one might say, suspiciously.
11:10 - Well, that was awkward.
11:11 ♪ I love it, I love it, I don't care ♪
11:15 ♪ I love it ♪